As much fun as this is, I think I wore myself out watching over a dozen Godzilla vs flicks in September, and I might not let this last until Halloween. I'm sure no one would be upset.

And, here we are on page 33!

There is one "tech" post with weblinks, and there are six essays left to post.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of Gojira (1954), Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956) and Godzilla (1998)

I Love Miniatures!!!

Godzilla: Tokyo SOS continues the use of miniatures for many of the shots, but by this time (2003) Toho was using a lot of computer-based compositing and motion tracking to make the dynamics of their Godzilla movies more exciting. If you compare the scenes of people running away and driving away from the giant monster in the 1954 film and the 2003 flick, you can see that the visual technique presented is much the same. But in the two different eras the way the compositing was handled in post-production was different.

Eiji Tsuburaya was selected to do the special photographic effects on Gojira because he had a long history of experience with miniatures in battle films. Some of his miniature work is practically indistinguishable from reality. Other miniature work in the film looks amateurish, and probably did in 1954. Undoubtedly, much of the budget that could have been used for better miniature work was consumed by the process of learning how to make the Gojira suit.

But the miniatures used to represent the city are the ones that are most on display. Those used in the Godzilla attacks are very detailed, and very convincing. The Tokyo Tower, the electrical power pylons that surround Tokyo Bay, the passenger train that collides with Big G's foot. These are almost real. Some of the tanks, some trucks and at least one helicopter are substandard. The jets are good, though. Compositing took a lot of work, and added generations to the finished film back in those days.

One series of images that I never realized were composited until it was pointed out on the Classic Media commentary track for Gojira, are the scenes of the power fence that we see briefly. The plates (backgrounds) are real footage of Tokyo locations, but the electrical towers were never there. These were miniature props, added in a matte process.

Some of the irritating flaws with miniatures must have happened because of miscommunication, or lack of time to re-do shots, or both. An example is a sequence where we see a firetruck racing through the streets of Tokyo, then suddenly it cuts to a shot of the truck swerving out of control and hitting a building, then to the firetruck stuck under a pile of rubble after hitting the building. The model truck in the swerving shot is a different kind of truck! This is obviously a stop-motion animation, which takes very long to do, and there might not have been time to shoot a replacement. But I haven't heard any commentary or read anything about it. If you ignore continuity, the sequence of three shots gets the idea across: the fire engine cannot put out fires because the panicking driver has a wreck. But it's impossible not to take continuity into account.

Shots during the storm on Odo island are, for the most part, miniatures and sets. There are two miniatures that aren't exactly right. The worst of these is a helicopter that Godzilla has supposedly smashed...but it is so clearly a toy helicopter, or at least a light-weight miniature, and the way it turns over in the wind is...fakey. Sad. Yet the raging stormy sea behind it (also a miniature set) looks amazingly real. All the miniatures in that sequence but the one are well-done. And that one spoils it for me.

The use of miniatures has not flagged at all across 60 years of Godzilla movie production. The miniatures would get better, then sometimes they would backslide (probably due to budgets). Compositing is better, now that it's computer-assisted. And when miniatures are used in the Millennium series, they are often very close to the best quality possible. A few are slackers, but not many. Nothing like the helicopter that rolls onto its side during a storm in the 1954 film!

The construction and use of miniatures has become recognized as a form of art. In 2012 the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art mounted a large scale exhibit of Japanese film miniatures that visitors could walk around in and photograph. There is a link below to a blog entry that features many fascinating pictures from this exhibit.

There is a certain phenomenon known by a few names, that will give away the miniature every time (even when the object in the photograph is not a miniature! -- see above): the diorama effect. Occasionally, you can spot this effect in Gojira or other Godzilla films, but not often. To increase depth of field and have deep focus (to eliminate the diorama effect) is one of the two reasons miniature motion photography needs so much light. The Gojira-suit effects required compensation for a double-dose of this. Additional light was needed to get to an f-stop of 16 or 22, and additional light was needed for the shorter exposure times of running film over-cranked in order to produce slow-motion. That served to make the guy in the Godzilla suit extra warm.

We have a new phenomenon that is finding its way into movies, even the Godzilla ones, and it might source from video games. In order to make the world seem more alive, you make the "living" things and mobile things in the images susceptible to the "wind." You don't notice this while playing the game any more than you are chronically aware of it as you walk or drive down the street. In CGI this must be added, and probably provides a subliminal sense of reality. Miniatures naturally have wind effects, although, like water, wind doesn't scale very easily.

It is probably my life-long fascination with miniatures and models that made me drool over the possibilities of CGI and animation when it was new. But miniatures have their own ambiance, and you can fake it with tilt-shifting lenses or software. Whereas miniature artists make tiny things seem regular sized, the tilt-shift devices can make the real world look like a badly-photographed miniature set!

Cool Pictures - Tilt Shift Photography. "New York based photographer Bryan Solarski captures cool pictures by traveling the world, photographing and then shrinking them using a popular photographic technique called 'tilt-shift'."

“TOKUSATSU” – Special Effects Exhibit at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. October, 2012 by orchid, on Life to Reset blog. "'Tokusatsu' is a term used to describe any live-action film that utilizes an actor suited up as a superhero or a monster, as it navigates around miniature city destroying or defending it. -- In simpler term, it is everything that anyone has imagined, seen or expected from a Japanese sci-fi film." A long, fascinating article with a lot of photos!

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Anyone have any opinions about the addition of Weblinks to the essay posts? Positive development, negative, neutral. Or, "I didn't notice."?

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

I'm still behind a few pages but I'm glad you added links about the tilt-shift trick. I first learned about it after The Social Network used it in a rowboat scene, but for some reason I've never read about it in-depth.

"So, you see, he was condemned to walk in darkness a quadrillion kilometres (we've adopted the metric system, you know)..."██████████████████████████████████████████The Devil, The Brothers Karamazov

A Comparison of Gojira (1954), Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956) and Godzilla (1998)

Godzilla Never Looks the Same

Even when they are slimmed down for one or two of the costumes, Godzilla has thunder-thighs. More recently, the big critter's posture has been canted more forward, but he's always been a tail-dragger except in the 1998 movie and the animated series derived from it.

Changes to the body aren't as easy to notice as re-workings of the big G's physiognomy. In 1954 his face was designed to resemble a mushroom cloud, but only a year later in 1955 he looked slightly more reptilian for Godzilla Raids Again. By 1999 he had lost all his nuclear-detonation appearance, and was just a big 'ol dinosaur surrogate.

Dennis Davison Jr. posted a composite that shows the faces of the Godzilla character through the years. I've reproduced the image below. The 1954 suit is upper left, the 2000-2004 suit is lower right. (The first weblink below is to his original post.)

In researching the movie critter for these essays I've run across a lot of interesting "information." In one forum I read that all the Toho costumes except one or two were burned in order to protect the copyrighted appearance of Godzilla. It doesn't seem reasonable to me. But I can't find any corroboration or denial of that "fact."

I also learned that four flicks was the limit of use for any costume, which means that there have been quite a large number of Godzillas, each a little different. In the Millennium series there is the greatest variation over the short term. Each film follows on the 1954 film, so Godzilla doesn't have to look the same in any two Millennium series films. Actually, two of them are connected plot-wise by Mechagodzilla. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. are linked up by story.

But the tradition of Godzilla not looking precisely the same from manifestation to manifestation began in 1954 when the Gojira suit and the hand puppet were made by two different groups, so have a different appearance!

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of Gojira (1954), Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956) and Godzilla (1998)

Hooked as a Kid

Many of the movies in these Rematches are ones I saw earlier in my life. Some not until now. Some because I wanted to see them. Some because another person recommended the film. And I can remember when and where I first saw many of those I've included so far. But Godzilla King of the Monsters is different in that regard. I have no idea where or when I first saw the film! I can be certain it was on TV, because we didn't go to see many monster films at the theater when I was growing up. In fact, I don't recall many Toho films showing even at drive-ins around Little Rock when I was a kid. A neighbor went to see King Kong vs. Godzilla at the theater. I wasn't interested. Perhaps I was still getting over falling in love with/being deeply disappointed by Reptilicus at that time.

It is even possible that my first clearly remembered viewing of King of the Monsters, around 1973 was the first time I had ever seen the 1956 film all the way through. But I have a fuzzy memory of seeing the movie in the living room at my parents' house in Little Rock in the middle 1960s. That was also on TV, and it was daytime. I remember thinking how cool the effect at the end is when the oxygen destroyer is doing away with Big G. It isn't possible to find anything on the internet that would tell what year the first TV broadcast(s) were. And if you've read anything about memory research, you know that each time you recall something you slightly alter the memory. So the truth of this is lost to the ages. Good thing it's nothing important!

I remember seeing another Honda project called The Mysterians. I was probably 13 that year. This features no giant monsters, but it does have some mighty big robots, and tanks with rayguns. Our neighbors had a color TV and I saw this one in color. I had seen several rampaging giant monster movies by that time...and perhaps Godzilla, King of the Monsters (on TV). Over the years I had learned about Rodan. The idea of a flying monster tearing up stuff with wind was fascinating, but I found no way to see the movie until the 1990s when DVDs came out. The Mysterians made me pay attention to how the effects were done, though. The ray-guns fired animated rays. The tanks were miniatures (read that "toy tanks" in the way I thought of it then) and the giant robots were clearly men in suits cavorting among miniatures. In another essay I write about my life-long love of and fascination with models and other miniatures.

So it's easy to see why I made every effort to see every Toho production that I could. But never at the theater. They were TV fare. One Sunday a TV station out of Paducah, KY broadcast Godzilla films and other Toho movies all day long (in fact, for 24 hours straight). I watched six of them! I actually felt nauseated at the end of my monster marathon, but I could have watched three more if I'd had the stamina. I know that I saw Godzilla, King of the Monsters on that day. I was in college, so it would have been early-70s. I also saw five other Toho monster films, and I don't remember much about any of them except that one of them concluded with the parents of a giant critter meeting up with it at an airport. It was touching. But I was done with that kind of movies for that day. When that one was over, the TV went off.

But I do love me some monster-mash flicks (in another essay I confess just how much). I got a VHS tape of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, and one of Mothra vs Godzilla, which I tried out on my older child when he was about 8 years old. There was no connection. I was slightly disappointed. I tried out the same tapes with my younger son when he was 7. To my delight I found that we had the same response to such movies. When he was 13, I saw my first Toho Godzilla film in the theater: Godzilla 2000 (still my only theater exposure to Toho Godzilla). At first we were going to be the smallest audience I'd ever watched a film with, but about three minutes before the film started a man came into the theater with his young daughter. So we ultimately had an audience of four!

Son #2 adored these films, and we would often rent Toho flicks from Blockbuster and watch them with popcorn and iced tea. In the late 1990s we also saw some Ishiro Honda film on VHS that we agreed was the worst movie we had ever seen. Some alternate universe invasion thingie. When I moved out of my apartment that was one of the VHS tapes I tossed. I don't recall the title.

To this day I still watch them. To this day I cringe when you can tell that the tanks, trucks, and ships are toy-sized. But I revel in the big critters doing architectural damage right up until they begin kung fu posturing and WMWF(World Monster Wrestling Federation) action. Then I zone out until the final shriek before the monster falls into a volcano, gets blown up by military fire, or wades into the ocean depths once more.

This Rematch led me to see nearly all the Godzilla flicks I have never watched. There are only 4 that I haven't seen at this time, and they are titles that I plan to continue to avoid.

As I've written before, this isn't a "guilty" pleasure, because I have no guilt about enjoying them. At the same time, I have no delusions about the quality of these outings as cinema. In most ways they suck. But they are supposed to be fun, and up until the 00s they were meant to be rather amateurish in their presentations, it seems. The pretense of the giant monsters was never in question. There is little or nothing done to hide the fantasy from your eyes. There is no attempt made to make you believe that these things did or could really exist: the directors are helping you use your imagination, that's all. Perhaps helping you use your imagination is the ultimate aim of all film productions.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of Gojira (1954), Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956) and Godzilla (1998)

Why Do People Hate This Film?

I'm sure there are people who intensely dislike the 1954 and 1956 films we're analyzing in this Rematch, and maybe all the blinking Godzilla sequels as well. But I've never known of any other Godzilla vehicle to receive the level of hateful, venomous criticism that the Roland Emmerich/Dean Devlin reboot from 1998 got piled on it. In fact, although there must be one somewhere, I've not known of any other film to have received such intense hatred.

Don't get me wrong: this is an oftentimes annoying movie. It uses comedy between characters in a bizarre way. There is banter and clumsiness that is supposed to make us laugh, but we've seen so much of it by ten minutes into the film that we just think, "Oh, God, when will this be over?" and forget that our remote controls have eject and power-off buttons. But I don't hate it. It has many flaws, but I enjoy watching it.

You can hate it if you want to, but please do so for legitimate reasons. The monster scenes in this movie are still pretty amazingly done. It's all the stuff in between that's trashy.

I think part of this avalanche of criticism stems from the IBM effect: something becomes so big and seemingly unstoppable that people just dislike it as a matter of course. The same thing happened to Microsoft, but that's probably because of their crummy self-centered products that became a sub-mediocre standard for PCs. They deserve most of the contempt, just the same way IBM does. And Roland Emmerich was on a huge roll in Hollywood with his blockbuster films when Godzilla came out. Were people simply dissing Emmerich and his success? Or are their condemnations of his Godzilla film legitimate based on the film itself?

More importantly, does (did) anyone care when they were casting magnificent heaps of aspersions on the 1998 film whether their critiques were legitimate?

This film cost an estimated $130,000,000.00 to make, and sits at #190 among worldwide film gross-incomes. If only 189 other movies have made more money around the world than it has, why wasn't the sequel made? Because certain people hated it.

If you haven't seen the 1998 film, and you love the Toho Godzilla flicks with a passion, then perhaps you should give it a miss. If you haven't seen it, but have heard about the rampant dislike for the movie and you wonder what it's all about, then you'll have to watch this one in order to find out, I guess. Prepare yourself to be incensed if you're easy to dismay. But it won't be because of the special effects. I'll bet they look really good on Blu-ray. It's likely that I won't find out, because I don't like the movie enough to buy another disc that has it on there. Especially not at Blu-ray prices. (And I'll admit that I watched it only once more for this thread, which makes the third time for me, while I manually grabbed stills from it to use in the posts here.)

Frankly, I've tried and tried to find the "bad CGI" or the "terrible CGI" in this film. I've read a lot about it, but if I freeze-frame the movie the compositing looks about as good as anyone could have done in 1998, to my eye. If I run the movie, with the action you can't really see terrible mismatches. As for the CGI generation itself, the lighting effects are good (and it's hard to tell sometimes what contrast ratios to use when you're doing skins and assigning lighting filters). There are a huge number of SFX shots in the movie! Did someone fix on a lighting angle mismatch and declare all the CGI in the entire thing to be crap? This person should be sentenced to watch SyFy movies nonstop for eight months. Apparently people thought the constant rain was there to cover up the bad CGI, and someone dared to write that on the 'net, so the idea took on a life of its own. Nobody bothered to actually check this out by looking at the finished movie, they just put two and two together and came up with seven. I haven't read any criticism that the light level inside Godzilla's mouth is erroneously slightly too bright in some shots, and that would be legitimate to point out, but it's not a show-stopper. If it were dark in there, the way it would be with a suit, people would criticize that as well, if they knew it was CGI. Folks are looking for CGI to be "off" and if they look hard enough they can at least imagine that it's not done right!

As for the critter looking different, and moving realistically rather than man-in-suit-ishly, there are a bazillion other Godzilla films that have the look you want. Go watch those and quit whining about this one. Perhaps you don't like Godzilla burrowing like Baragon?

Ironically, one of the things critics whined about was that there is so much whining in this movie. ¿Que? Are you trying to break the record for petulance by whining even more about it? There is less whining in this movie than there is in the sum of the critical comments made about it. Ha ha!

Yeah, the face of the '98 CGI Godzilla looks bizarre. But all the original Godzilla faces look kind of bizarre. I guess the big 1998 chin is because they had to get a taxicab in the critter's mouth.

Crazy monster design? okay maybe I could give you that, but what's a monster supposed to look like? Bad special effects, no. Not at all.

As for the 1998 Godzilla, come on, the very presence of Jean Reno makes up for any technical slip, writing horror, or bad acting on the part of anyone involved with this film. Reno forces all the humor in any scene in which he appears to submerge to an acceptable level, no matter how goofily Devlin might have written the scene. The scenes with Broderick and Reno on the way to discover the creature's nest are the best character interactions in the film. Reno saves it.

And Godzilla trashes buildings left and right. I got what I came for. The hole in the MetLife building with helicopters circling behind it is primo.

After watching and re-watching so many of the Toho films over the past month it seems possible that the Toho fanboys hated the more "realistic" look of the film. It isn't as clearly "playing around" as the Toho man-in-suit-among-miniature-sets style of traditional Godzilla flicks. In a commentary track David Kalat points out the Japanese culture prefers fantasy over reality in many cases. As an example, he uses the 1980 Kinji Fukasaku film Virus and its special effects. With an enormous budget the film crew was able to hire American stars, and even have the special effects sequences done by an American lab. But when Fukasaku saw the rushes from the American effects house, he said that he couldn't use it, it was too realistic. He had all those scenes redone in Japan!

This analysis gives me a sort of empty feeling about the chances of the 2014 film to avoid what happened to the 1998 film. The Japanese maintain a focus on fantasy when they make these films, and the producers of the Legendary reboot have already said they're going for reality and seriousness. That could be a death-wish.

But maybe it was the design of Godzilla in the '98 flick. Maybe since Legendary has made the critter look more like the Toho beast, but with a Charlie Brown head that's kind of disturbing to me, the fanboys will be assuaged by that. Godzilla will sort of look like Godzilla. They can't say that "they got everything wrong!" in the design. Not everything. But you can never please everybody. Guess we'll find out next year.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of Gojira (1954), Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956) and Godzilla (1998)

Rekindling the Atomic Breath

Times change. We know that. How many of the remakes we've looked at in this thread are different from their predecessors simply because time has passed? Technology may have advanced and some director thinks a "better" film can be made with the more modern tools available. Or time passes and notions change about what is decent, or permissible, and a director decides to use the new rules and retell the story. Or perhaps someone has simply done things differently in another film in the same genre, so a director decides to apply the new generic methods to an old tale.

Gojira's legacy is so far-reaching that probably all three of these, and even more aspects have come into play over six decades. But sometimes we see a company deciding to reboot a franchise, as it's called, and start over fresh for a new generation. Sometimes these kick-starts work, and sometimes they don't. I doubt that the term "reboot" was in wide use to describe restarting anything other than computers when the Heisei series of Godzilla films was kicked off in 1984. The first time I recall hearing the term used for a franchise was when Tim Burton "rebooted" the Batman franchise.

To me, the amazing thing is that Godzilla has been rebooted twice with some degree of success (1984 & 1999), and one attempt ended in a terrible critical and audience failure (1998). Well, there is another reboot on the near horizon. Will the fourth time be charmed?

I agree with those who complain that Hollywood seems to have lost its ability to deal with new ideas. The money people out there don't seem to recognize, or to have any respect for anything that might not be a sure thing. They don't have to risk the huge piles of cash that they do, but they seem to insist on doing just that. And as a result they ratchet up the risk that would come with failure, so that they hem themselves into playing it safe. If the films are for a new generation of people who weren't even born when the last version was made, maybe that will work.

Throughout 60 years in America very few of the Godzilla films have been shown in theaters. For a long time I marveled that I had never bothered to go see a Godzilla film at a theater. But I recently learned from my reading that only a handful of the films were ever released for theatrical distribution in the US. I've seen them from VHS or DVD the way most Americans have.

The Godzilla flicks used to be relatively cheap. But now even Toho has gotten onto the more expensive production values wagon. You can tell that they want to use the newfangled tools of CGI and so forth, but they want someone else to take the risk. That's why the 1998 Godzilla was made. Tristar seems to have taken the blame for its failure, but look carefully at who initiated the whole business deal, and you'll see that Toho approved everything all along the way.

Following the success of King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) Toho fell into monster fight films as a grind. As you can tell from the titles, Toho has simply repeated themselves frequently with Godzilla fighting the same monsters over and over from series to series, although King Kong has never reappeared. Sadly, the monsters I find the most boring (King Ghidorah and Mothra) are re-used the most often. But there were changes in cultural values, and cinematic technical advances to be explored. Keep in mind that these have always been low-budget films. The Millennium series are the most expensive Toho kaiju films ever made, with Final Wars estimated to have cost $19,500,000.00. There is another tell-tale aspect to the second and third series: an admission that the prior series went off track, because each restart (except 1998) supposedly begins right after the story in the 1954 film. And then the producers, failing to come up with any new ideas, repeat the same battles between the same old monsters. Women characters become a bit more important in the Heisei and Millennium series, but only slightly, because Toho was an early adopter of the female hero trope. The Big Worry evolved from nuclear war to biological holocaust in the 90s.

So the Heisei "reboot" took off in 1984 and lasted for a while, producing 7 new movies but all with the same basic monsters. Then the Millennium reboot got kicked off after that maligned Tristar film (an attempted reboot). Toho produced 6 films based on the same old Toho characters.

In one sense the attempted Tristar reboot, although it fizzled on its own (spawning an animated TV series instead of two more theatrical films), rekindled enough interest in the Toho monsters that an unintended, unscheduled reboot took place in 1999!

To me, the most interesting factor of the Millennium series of movies is that each of them follows the 1954 film in chronology (except two that make up a mini-series). In that sense, it is not a series of sequels, but a new collection of independent sequels to the initial Honda film. Uhm, with the same dusty old characters that appeared in the Showa and Heisei era films.

Will the 2014 release start a new kind of reboot, with Legendary Pictures producing several Godzilla titles? Or will it fail, but kindle another run of Toho retreads with the same old group of daikaiju from the Toho fold? No one knows, yet. Few people know what that film will be like. To me it sounds like its already into "yawn, oh no not again," territory with the addition of two monsters for new-G to fight. (Sigh) We'll see. Seems like they're more or less starting off with a $160,000,000.00 re-tread. I wonder if this one is supposed to follow in story terms on the end of the 1954 film!

I must admit: I'm curious. I might see this next one in 3D at the theater. It was interesting to watch the more advanced cinematic techniques employed on the 1999 Godzilla 2000 film from Toho projected onto a 50-foot wide screen. Perhaps it would be worth a bit over ten bucks to see this new one once. But not even 3D will save it if the story is just another dose of WMWF crap. I'm hoping for something that goes beyond that, at least a little. But I won't hold my breath...I don't like passing out.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of Gojira (1954), Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956) and Godzilla (1998)

Not Really Horror

Emiko Yamane makes a reprise appearance in the 1995 film, Godzilla vs. Destoroya. I don't think by that time anyone confused Godzilla films with, you know, like, horror movies. But in the 1950s and 1960s the giant insect/mammal/lizard/human flicks were categorized as horror films because they dealt with something that would no doubt be scary if you witnessed/experienced it in real life. And I'll have to admit, as I did in another essay or a review or something, that if I saw the goofiest looking Godzilla suit as a real-life giant critter, I'd probably wet my breeches.

Sometimes I get goose bumps and creepy tingles when I watch well-made horror flicks. But I never get any symptom of being skeered when I watch Big G on the screen. I recall a thread at RT a few years ago where we tried to develop a consensus definition of the word horror. I don't recall whether we did it or not, and I didn't bookmark the thread. Maybe one of you bookmarked it.

Last year the Halloween Rematch was The Fly, and those films didn't give me many tingles or goosebumps either. The 1986 version sort of grossed me out a little bit. Gojira doesn't even have any jump scenes. I can't remember a single one in any of the Toho productions. Maybe there is one in the Tri-Star when baby zillas appear suddenly.

So, why does the IMDb page for Gojira call it "Drama | Horror | Sci-Fi"? I think it's because there is potential horror, not only of the kind that is mentioned above (if this were real...) but of the kind that only a handful of people have ever experienced in the presence of a nuclear explosion. My experience of nuclear explosions is limited to a close parallel with my experiences of Godzilla: all on the screen.

That is not a complaint.

I try to imagine each time I watch Trinity and Beyond: the Atomic Bomb Movie what the men and the few women who got to look through dark glass at the actual mushroom clouds would have felt. It causes me to imagine that I would have been awestruck by the incredible (in the sense of totally unbelievable) power of that bright light. The rumble and blast must have felt alien, buffeting against the human body. It must have been frightening, probably horrifying to think of even one of those devices being used against actual human beings.

I don't even like to think about experiences like those of the fictional woman in Gojira who moved from Nagasaki to Tokyo after WWII: she's faced with Godzilla a few years after surviving the atomic bomb in her home town. But she was never really in Nagasaki. And the monster wasn't really tromping through downtown Tokyo.

But what about those who were really present in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1944; what did they experience? It could not have been comprehensible. Some didn't live beyond their first glimpse of the detonation, others didn't even see the detonation, others had to help clean up in the aftermath. There were no welder's goggles for them. They were not at a safe distance from the explosion. Some of them felt it. Some of them felt their eyes literally melt from the intense light and heat. Some who were closer to the blast vanished into gaseous molecules from the heat. Some of the immediate survivors later developed disease from the radiation exposure. Many immediate survivors became eventual casualties. The ultimate survivors no doubt lost so many friends and family members.

That is the horror that is in Gojira. The horror of the thing that we created being loose in the world. As a citizen of the USA it has to be added: the thing that my country created, and actually used in a war. Japan is the only nation that has the experience of being the target of an atomic weapon, but my country is the only country that has been (so far) brazen enough to actually use one in anger.

The horror of Gojira and its Godzilla offspring isn't really up on the screen at all. It's in the mind of anyone who contemplates what the fictional beastie is supposed to stand for. Human technology unleashed without moral qualms, and the aftermath of that arrogance. (It isn't only The Bomb. We've done it with other things that aren't even locally that deadly.) But if the consequence of building and using such weapons was that real, if giant monsters would rise up out of the real ocean and attack your real cities, would any government dare pursue nuclear weapons?

Probably. They'd just blame the monster's arrival on foreigners, or the other political party. (Sigh.)

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Why Godzilla is Far Deeper Than You Think. By Stefanie Fay, on hubpages. "While these movies are great to watch, seated on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn in hand, they actually have a tendency to have far deeper messages than you may realize. Godzilla movies cover everything from warnings about the dangers of nuclear war and environmental devastation to respecting the remains of the dead. These movies have a lot to say..."The Doctor's Model Mansion. Godzilla (1954) Posted by The Doctor in Rare & Unusual. "I still can’t believe I am saying this because we all know that Godzilla was really a man in a rubber suit, but someone in Japan decided to create the skeleton of the Big G as if he were real. Hey, this is the stuff that this hobby is all about."GODZILLA 1954 SKELETON. Photos.Worst Giant Ape Film of All Time? Konga vs. The Mighty Peking Man. "Since I started writing this blog back in July, 2011, my youngest son, Judah, has become a giant monster fanatic (a chip off the old block; I adored all the same stuff at his age)." Andrew | April 24, 2012 at Fantastical Andrew Fox blog.

REVIEWS and INFORMATION:

Saturday Editor’s Pick: Godzilla (1954). by Alt Screen on April 29, 2012. "The dilute Amercanization isn’t terrible, but it has nothing like the apocalyptic intensity of the Honda original. The movie is funereal—but that turns out to be a good thing. The early part of Gojira induces a trancelike funk, the perfect state in which to meet one of the most bone-chilling monsters that the movies have ever belched up. The film bestirs itself slowly, like a beast awakening on the ocean floor."Characters: Godzilla. "During the Showa Era, Godzilla went from a fairly animalistic monster that fought using his teeth and claws (along with his thermonuclear breath) to something of an anthro-animal superhero who would pretty much fight using kung fu moves. This is up to and including an Ali-Shuffle in Monster Zero."Godzilla Raids Again (1955) Review. AKA Gigantis the Fire Monster (1959). From the Sidelines blogspot, posted Tuesday, October 16, 2012 by Patrick Boone at 11:38 PM. "Then I saw the ending of the American version. They spliced in part of the scene with Tsukioka and Hidemi’s date so that they are back at Osaka looking out over the railing at the sea. It is accompanied by narration, of course. It talks of how they looked at the moon… and the film shows a sunset."

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Well, our big monster friend is wading back out into the deeps. He cringed when I joked about an oxygen destroyer.

Next we'll be easing on down the road with Dorothy and friends beginning after Halloween.

And I'm working on formatting and getting screen grabs to do a prospective "FlashMatch" comparing the two versions of Scum and the more recent Dog Pound, all based on the same stage play. Might get around to it, might not. We'll see. I might also take a couple weeks off doing this. I'll probably start on the WIZ Multimatch sometime soon, but won't post until after 1 November 2013.

Eight Rematches to go!

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

dreiser wrote:I don't care for Godzilla movies, otherwise I'd be posting more. Still respect the hell out of your work here.

Apparently you're in the majority on this board.

I'm pretty sure I'm burned out on Gojira and clan for a while.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

I saw the 1998 version opening weekend when I was in high school and the only thing I remember liking about it was Jean Reno. You said at one point that, "the very presence of Jean Reno makes up for any technical slip, writing horror, or bad acting on the part of anyone involved with this film". ...so, I guess we're on a similar page there.

I enjoyed reading through this today. I am in the waiting room while my wife is having a procedure done and it was a nice way to pass some time. Great job as always. I am curious about watching some of these now that I have so much background information on them.

"My heart and mind are as they were when I was a child. Then I loved to play with toys and read stories of magic. I still do. My wish is only to make life happier and more beautiful for those who will go and see my films of fantasy."

DaiKamonohashi wrote:Jesus Christ, I had no idea this was going on and now I feel way too behind to actually comment on any of it. XD

Well, it's over, so it won't be gaining on you. You've got plenty of time, now!

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Bit of an odd post next. I haven't made the initial post for The WIZ Multimatch up, and won't for a couple weeks, but I wanted to put up the FindIt post in case anyone would like links to find the stuff to be examined.

Deal with the wierdness and lack of link to the IP. Just deal. K?

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

So, like are any of you cool kids making plans to skip along the yellow brick road with Dot and her friends?

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

I don't care for the part of the movie where they get in that county where the trees voted to severely curtail the road maintenance budget.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Yeah, I don't think those apple trees were in favor of The New Deal at all.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Another scary thing is that they must have had no early witch warning system. I mean Wickie of the West just turns up there, and there aren't any emergency sirens going off, or anything.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

This is the initial post for The Rematch between Scum (1977) & Scum (1979) & Dog Pound (2010)

Massive Spoilers!This FlasHmatch is complete as of 1 November 2013.

Posted all at once -- Selected by Gort

Essays for the FlasHmatch of Scum/Dog Pound.

Go back using these buttons.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

This is the first film in the Remake Rematches that I can think of that simply wasn't shown. At least for a very long time. It was written, shot, edited, and mastered by Minton, Clarke and crew for the long-running Play for Today television series, and then killed by the president of the BBC. Permanently banned from broadcast! Two years later a cinematic film version was made from the same idea by the same director, with some of the same cast members. The screenplay once again came from Roy Minton. The remake was made because the rights to the work reverted to Mr. Minton after a certain period. Even the theatrical film was embroiled in controversy.

In some documentary about 70s exploitation films I saw a brief clip from Scum (1977), but the title left no impression on me. I thought I was completely unaware of the film, until the DVD arrived and that scene played. In the same year this film was made, the rings around the planet Uranus were discovered. Two years later, when the remake came out for theaters, the rings around Jupiter were discovered. The astronomical news made it to my eyes and ears in both years. These films didn't.

The original BBC television film appears as an extra on the Blue Underground release of the 1979 film. It gets its own disc and commentary tracks. The broadcast ban was eventually lifted, and the original version was finally broadcast on BBC Two in 1991, 14 years after it was completed.

The 1970s were a time when filmmakers in English-speaking countries were unable to resist their newfound freedom to show the fully exposed human body in their movies. There is much more nudity (all male) in the TV version, although it seems to make sense in the course of the story. One character, Angel, is naked more than the other two. He is the youngest, smallest, and has the least defense against the corrupt system into which he's been thrown. So, the nudity in his case might be symbolic of his situation. Once, he is seen charging naked from the bath where his clothes have been stolen, which might have gone unpunished except that the prison matron is coming up the stairs as he is headed downstairs back to his cell. Her shriek of alarm leads to him being punished for what is essentially another person's act (theft of his clothing).

Here are a few aspects of the film and whether I like them or don't care for them:

Like: This film uses location and costuming to represent situations or states in a symbolic way. For example, shortly after we meet the three main protagonists of the BBC film, we see them all naked, and being forced to sit down and bathe in tubs of over-heated water. The symbolism of the nudity is clear: a person is never more vulnerable than when he/she is naked. Carlin is the only one who's a bit larger than most his age. That the boys are "getting themselves into hot water" didn't occur to me until I started writing this entry.

Like: The writers and producers were gutsy enough (for the day) to have a pair of scenes depicting Carlin as taking a "missus." Ray Winstone says in a commentary on the scene that he didn't think it was realistic, and it was perhaps his feelings about it that got the shots left out of the theatrical remake. Perhaps Winstone's objection was to the way in which the scene is written (it is rather clumsy) rather than to the suggestion that young men might take other young men for sexual purposes in prison. Roy Minton says, in an interview on the DVD that he learned of this practice from an inmate of the British borstal and adult prison system, who insisted that it was quite common.Don't Like: the way in which the first "missus" scene is handled. Minton writes it in an ironic way so that Peter Rhodes, the prospective sexual slave, first points out how disgusted he is that one of the screws in the wing he's been moved from tried to sexually abuse him, and then Carlin reveals that it's precisely that kind of service that Carlin wants. So far so good, except that the other boy agrees, for sake of protection, since by that time Carlin effectively runs the borstal. This robs the scene of any sense of realism, especially with Carlin's repeated insistence that he's not a poof. Carlin, at least, leaves the choice up to the other inmate, not desiring to force himself on the boy in that manner (which adds an interesting incongruity to Carlin's temperament as a character). But this only adds to the clumsy unreality of the scene. The omission of Rhodes from the other two versions doesn't harm them at all, perhaps because this version presents the situation almost as an aside.

Like: The character Archer, an embezzler, provides an internal perspective on the goings-on. He is 7-8 years older than the rest of the boys there, should have been sent to an adult prison, but there currently isn't room. His self-appointed goal is to bide his time, and at the same time make things as difficult for the administration at this borstal as he can. Archer understands that everything that happens to him inside the borstal is meant to break his spirit, and that is one thing he will not allow.

Like: The film lights into the racism of the wardens and white inmates without flinching. Although this detestable harassment gets a bit boring in the film, it must have been even more detestable for the black inmates of the borstal system. Young, black inmate Angel is our prime example, in this film. One of the worst aspects of racism is the tendency of racists to hold the minority person responsible for something that he cannot control (having been born a certain ethnicity). It's as if the racist is declaring: Angel, not only is it a terrible affront to me that you are a black bastard, it's your fault for being born that way. So, the film elegantly shows the stupidity of racism at its very roots. But only if you are not a racist. If you are a racist the film presents dozens of opportunities for you to cry, "Right on, man!" It's sort of like making an anti-war film by ramping up the explicit violence of battle scenes. That tactic can cut either way.Don't Like: Perhaps it is my historical perspective when viewing the film, but I got tired rather quickly of hearing the wardens and white inmates talking to the black inmates and invariably using some variation of "you black baastuhd." Maybe the characters can't think of anything else to say, but the word bastard has totally lost its sting in the early 21st century. It was one of the words you couldn't say in a US broadcast in 1977. I'm not sure it was restricted in the UK. It does have the effect of arousing my empathy with Angel when he is repeatedly castigated with this taunt, but when I've gotten the point, it just goes on and on.

Like: Few films are made without musical soundtracks. This one is: except for a couple of scenes when music is playing on the radio, there isn't any music in the entire run (until the title credits at the end). This adds to the austerity of the borstal environment. There is not any art to ease the passage of the boys who pass through these hallways. Of course the presence of radios suggests that the filmmakers are drawing another of their symbolic conceits by eliminating even diagetic music from most of the film. But, it is effective. (And it gives me a chance to use one of Trip's favorite words. Now if only I can figure out how to write about diagetic light. Or diagetic conversation!)

Like: Once again, the filmmakers are gutsy for 1977 and include a two-on-one inmate rape scene. I applaud their boldness. But its intensity seems to derail the film at that point. They found some way to keep that from happening in the 1979 version. In this original film the rape arrives from nowhere. There is a hint beforehand in the 1979 version. Thus,Don't Like: The inclusion of a gang rape in the story makes the entire proceedings up to that point seem immaterial. And it is brutally depicted (but not so much so as in the remake). The nearly overwhelming emotional impact of the film up to that point, the endless parade of humiliation and pummeling, has you so emotionally keyed up that your capacity for feeling is finally surpassed. It is almost like an emotional aneurysm if you haven't succeeded in holding yourself aloof from the film until that point. I watched this version last, so I knew that the scene was coming up. When I saw the 1979 film the scene was not unexpected, but its violence was committed by three characters we barely had seen before. The rape scene in the 1979 production is terribly honest in its staging, and this earlier version doesn't present the incident with any less honesty. This isn't a criticism of including the gang rape in the structure of the film, mind you, but I saw the 2010 and 1979 versions before I watched this one, and don't think it's handled as well here. For one thing the camera placement during the scene is rather pedestrian as if it's trying to keep us from engaging emotionally with what we see. That doesn't work, and sets up some kind of cognitive dissonance that the 2010 and 1979 versions do not. A rape is not an ordinary occurrence, so placing the camera in a "comfortable" cinematic framing doesn't help. As I wrote above, I think its because the movie has everything at such an elevated emotional level before you reach this part that you have nowhere left to go but numb.

If I understood more about the period in general for cinema, I could probably see the genuine impact this film had on what came after it. I know it was intended to be what later came to be called "edgy." Some of the violence is still capable of verging on shocking. But what the film seemed like 36 years ago I can't imagine. My memory isn't that clear. In the minds of the people in charge of British television of the day, it went way too far. It certainly is a good lesson in how something that seems one way on paper can be an entirely different way when you can see and hear it on the screen.

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Scum 1977 from Scum 1979 WikiPlay for Today from WikipediaScum (1977) from BFI Screen-online. "The brutality that shocked the BBC and prevented Scum from being broadcast is precisely what makes it such an important work. In what was to become Clarke's trademark approach to tackling contentious social issues, he and writer Roy Minton decided the best way to critique the violence inherent in the borstal system was simply to show it."Scum (1979 - film version). The page is more about the 1977 version. "On 27 July 1991 BBC2 aired the first screening of the TV version of Scum, which was a 1977 Play for Today which had been banned and took 14 years to be shown."

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

It's not unheard of for a remake to reach a greater audience than the original film did. But the circumstances here are a bit different. Alan Clarke's 1977 TV film Scum was supposed to be broadcast as part of a BBC series called Play for Today. No one involved seemed to have any problems with it until they saw the finished product. It was banned from broadcast! So Clark and company set about to raise money to create another film. They accomplished this in 1979 using some of the same actors, and with the return of writer Roy Minton.

It is the second film, the one that was released to theaters that we're considering in this review. Not worried about how TV executives might react to some of the more explicit moments in their script, they pulled out most of the stops, although one minor aspect of the 1977 BBC film is omitted from this version because actor Ray Winstone didn't think it was realistic. A social campaigner brought a suit against UK Channel 4 in 1983 when the film was broadcast, and she won, but Channel 4 won on appeal.

There are differences between the un-broadcast TV version and the theatrical release version, proving that not even Minton and Clarke were immune from tinkering with the original movie when remaking it! Some of the changes are substantial and effective, while others are so subtle as to go unnoticed except by fanatical followers. Overall, they improve the story but one or two points about the original conception shine.

For the sake of clarity it might be good for me to point out again that I saw these three films in reverse chronological order. I saw the 1979 theatrical film before I saw the TV version.

Here are some aspects of the film and whether I like them or don't care for them:

Like: With a tweak or two, and the addition of two small events, plus re-casting, Archer becomes an even more interesting character than he was in the original TV film. In this film he is not only a vegetarian, but he eschews the wearing of leather shoes. When Carlin meets him, Archer is perfunctorily cleaning dirt off the soles of his feet. The administration rises to his goad, and the actor's faint smirk when he "wins" this round (the prison governor gets Archer some plastic boots to wear) is marvelous. The second Archer is much more interesting than the first simply because Mick Ford was selected to bring him to life. And the scene with Mr. Hunt during a church service that Archer chooses not to attend reveals the character's inspiration for the way to get through his incarceration: he read on a match box that it takes only 13 muscles to smile, but 68 to frown. And he has decided to save energy. Ford lays this line excellently.

Like: The violence of the film up until the climactic scene in the greenhouse is reduced enough in this production that the gang rape doesn't force the emotional involvement over the top, in the way that it does in the 1977 film. Thus, although the scene is more brutally played in the theatrical film, it leaves enough emotional space beforehand that you can still feel something when the scene happens. This probably shows that the filmmakers analyzed carefully what went wrong in their TV film, and made adjustments. It could also be that the casting is better in this version, and the actors handle their moments more adeptly.

Like: As they did in the 1977 TV film, Clark and crew stick with diagetic music only in this version. And there is very little of that. Once more it works to create a greater sense of the starkness of the borstal environment.

Like: Although I don't like the idea of rape (there is a gang rape scene in this film that is gut-wrenching), based on cinematic terms I find the scene well-played and edited. Makes me uncomfortable, too; mainly because it really makes me hate the three rapists, and the warden who sees the act in progress but does bloody nothing to stop it, then holds the victim responsible for it happening in the first place. I like the scene because it is well-done cinematically, but I hate it at the same time because it arouses such intense feelings of hatred. Perhaps this scene was one of the strongest influences on getting the English government to investigate practices in the borstal system, leading to reform.Don't Like: The duration of the rape scene. I understand why, but it goes on way past the time when I am uncomfortable with it, and ready for it to be over. It gets the point across with a brutal disrobing and the first thrust. Yet the scene carries on through all three perpetrators' buggery. This ambivalence about the scene has led to a brief essay. I'll have to say that because Clarke decided to stay with the moment for as long as he does, it makes you either look on in horror (experiencing Davis' horror and your own), or turn away. I suppose even if you turn away, the soundtrack would still provide the same feelings for the viewer. And in real life, for the boy bent over the potting table it would seem ten times as long. Plus, I've read that for the victim a rape is never really over at all.

Like: The casting of Davis in this film is the best of all three films. The youngster who plays him does vulnerability very well, so that when his climactic scene comes, and there is a shot of him on the floor of his cell, it really tugs at the heartstrings. Although, I don't know if it would have when I was in my 20s or 30s. The actor is the shortest of the three main characters in this film. He is able to turn on the tears. Sometimes perhaps he overdoes it, but he accomplishes only what Clarke wants, I think. If it gets to the end of the movie and you aren't thinking "What a fucking miscarriage of justice, what a bloody hell of a way to operate a prison!" then Clarke has probably failed for you.

Don't Like: Ray Winstone was at least a stone heavier by the time this version was filmed, so he is even larger compared with the other characters than he was in 1977. Now, I might not have noticed this, except for seeing Dog Pound first, where Butch's slighter size plays very well and adds surprise to his take-over. If I had seen the theatrical Scum first, I might have liked Carlin's relative size advantage all right. After all, it fits into our stereotypical notions of which boy would wind up at the top of the heap.

It's difficult for me to find anything specific about the film that I don't like, other than the way it makes me feel. And that is the whole point, so I can't fault it for accomplishing what it sets out to do. For all the ramped up aggression, the film manages to allow the intellectual part of the brain to function better than its predecessor does. At least for me.

Go back using these buttons.

Scum (1979) keywords at IMDbScum film from Scum 1979 WikiScum (1979) at IMDbScum (Great Britain, 1979) from A Petrified Fountain blog, posted Tuesday, 2 June 2009 by Scott Jordan Harris. "With the exception of Mike Tyson and Norman Whiteside, Ray Winstone was the most intimidating teenager in the history of humankind – and so he is ideally cast as Carlin, a ‘light-fingered guttersnipe’ transferred to one borstal because he assaulted an officer at another."Scum (film) from Wikipedia. "Scum is a 1979 British crime drama film directed by Alan Clarke, portraying the brutality of life inside a British borstal. The script was originally made for the BBC's Play for Today strand in 1977, however due to the violence depicted, it was withdrawn from broadcast."

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Usually, you hear about an original film first, don't you? And then you find the remake. Maybe not. I saw the second remake of The Maltese Falcon decades before I even knew there were two earlier films made from the same story. In this case, I found Dog Pound first, then learned about Scum (1977) and Scum (1979) when reading reviews of the 2010 second remake. That's the end of my comparison between The Maltese Falcon and Dog Pound.

Not every movie has to be great to be worth watching. And this one seems to both retrace earlier steps and cut new ground. Not sure why. Or how! I like it overall, but I don't like everything about it.

When the first shot of Adam Butcher, who plays the character Butch in this film, flashed on the screen, I had another one of those instances where I'm sure I've seen an actor or actress in something else. As you know, my research usually proves that he/she just has "one of those faces" that looks familiar but truly isn't. In this case, my hunch was right. I saw a younger Adam Butcher in the film St.Ralph. He was good in that film and seems to have improved his acting chops in the subsequent years.

Roy Minton, who penned the first two versions is not credited as a writer here, although if you know anything about the first film the character names establish that there is a connection between this film and the 1979 Scum. The Wikipedia page says that the film is "highly influenced by" Scum. Yes. Characters and incidents are replicated wholesale here, in an American context but clearly lifted from the earlier films. A credit at the end of the film acknowledges that: "Based upon the motion picture Scum, a Boyd's Co production written by Roy Minton, directed by Alan Clarke, and produced by Davina Belling and Clive Parsons."

This Canadian production relocates the action to Enola Vale, a fictional Montana youth prison facility. In a departure from the ambiance of Scum, Enola Vale is a hotbed of inmate-on-inmate violence more than wardens beating up the kids. Although it's a prison film it isn't about the violence as much as it is about the characters, both the prisoners and their wardens. For that reason your initial reaction might be the same as mine: "I've seen this all before." But there is more invention to the film than you first perceive. The criticism has shifted from the corruption within the British borstal system to criticism (never blatant) of the prison-for-profit mistake made by the United States correctional system. Goodyear is transformed into a man who at least partially wants to help these boys find a way to make life better for themselves and those who have to live around them. But his temperament thwarts him.

Here are some aspects of the film and whether I like them or don't care for them:

Like: The soundtrack. A very pleasant counterpoint to the violence of the story.

Like: The use of actual inmates to play some of the roles seems to heighten the realism of the movie, but it also takes the edge off the acting in some scenes. Taylor Poulin plays Banks with a grinning menace that comes through the screen. Because he is a real-life juvenile offender who has done time, he has the mannerisms down cold. I think he is simply being himself, and that is potent enough.Don't Like: Some of the acting is not as sharp as that in either version of Scum, and many of the actors in those films were also non-professionals. Chapiron's use of unseasoned actors who have done time in correctional institutions to provide authenticity to the film works only partially. But when you need so many teenagers in your cast, what are you to do? If the youngsters are marginally decent at acting, it works fine. If they are only capable of playing themselves and the self is flat, the character is flat. It isn't all that easy to play an ordinary person. You can't always do it by simply being yourself...that technique works or doesn't depending on who you are.

Like: Sometimes the writing, acting and direction, and mise en scene all come together to give certain moments in this film great empathetic force. At other times not. But the scene where the three protagonists are painting a wall and Goodyear overreacts, taking out a marital telephone quarrel on one of the boys is one of the better-staged ones. All the cues meld into sympathy for Angel, who bears the brunt of the anger, and Goodyear who realizes that he has made a terrible mistake, except it is too late. In all three films the only other scene that has the same degree of power and empathy is the greenhouse rape scene in the 1979 Scum.

Like: Butch's takeover is well-played, though kind of hard to watch.Don't Like: The violence in this film is exaggerated. This seems to be a thing that audiences expect nowadays. If the level of violence doesn't touch on or surpass the ridiculous, why bother? This is not to say that the earlier versions of the story aren't already ultraviolent, but this one steps it up to match modern expectations. I had another thought about this:Don't Like: The violence grows out of the story well enough, but there is so much of it. It's not always fist on face violence. Glares and tones of voice begin to grate on the viewer as much as they must on inmates and warders. It's kind of like the rain in the 1998 Godzilla flick: it provides ambiance, but you aren't allowed to escape it. We are asked to empathize with boys who are in situations we aren't likely to have been in, and we rarely see them behaving well. So Chapiron asks us to engage with unlikable, mean boys, which doesn't really work very well. Not in a juvenile correction facility, and not in this film.

Don't Like: On the surface this movie seems to be a collection of rehashed, trope-heavy scenes.Like: Chapiron and crew manage to take some very familiar tropes from prison films and alter them just enough, and give their characters just enough personality so that the film ultimately works. One criticism that I read somewhere was that there is a standard haircut for boys in these places. And that the inmates seem to wander about unsupervised a lot of the time. I don't know whether that could happen in a Youth Correctional Facility or not, but the haircuts, violations of dress code and wandering about are dramatic devices, not an attempt to show us what it's really like inside a place like the fictional Enola Vale facility.

Don't Like: Having a character kill himself is always risky. If it's done well, the viewer will feel tremendous loss and sorrow for the departed character. If it is done slightly wrong the whole scene may fall flat, or in the case of the suicide in this movie, leave you wondering what the heck you're looking at. The rape of Davis by two other characters is presented in a manner that is very reserved, so that the brutality of it is shaved away and it merely seems like a prison film cliche. The trouble with the suicide scene in Dog Pound is that the previous (rape) scene builds sympathy for the Davis character, then it dissipates with the disclosure of...WTF happened? There is no explanation. Where did all the blood come from? The lack of clarity robs the ending of the film of what should have been greater emotional impact. In Scum we see that Davis has a razor blade, and we know it is the suicide that leads to a riot among the inmates. In this film it seems that the impetus for the riot is another death that took place earlier, although the two are faintly connected.

Don't Like: In both versions of Scum one of the points of making the movies in the first place is spoken aloud by the character Archer. The inmates and wardens aren't that much different. Dog Pound "says" this cinematically, but no one ever states it. Perhaps it needs to be said directly by someone in the cast, because in this film the action says the same thing, but it leaves it up to the viewer to notice it; something that I didn't do until I watched the earlier versions of the story, and had someone do me the favor of saying what it was all about. For example, when Butch is kneecapped by the security men who drag him back inside the building at the end of the film, it comes across more as an assertion that he deserved it and asked for it, rather than a statement that both the boys incarcerated and the men set to watch over them are violent personalities. Sometimes saying something is "bad" but sometimes, if the context of the cinematic statement is muddy, it's not best to leave it up to the viewer to figure out what you're trying to say.

Someone in one of the reviews I glanced through while trying to find photos wrote that the violence in Scum was all gratuitous. This would be true if we knew there to be no violence in prisons. Do these three films exaggerate the amount of violence in prisons? Perhaps, but it might be the effect that my college film professor noted when we were about to watch His Girl Friday: the quips and clever remarks that flash back and forth constantly in screwball comedies are realistic, in that clever people do talk that way. But he warned us that these remarks would be an accumulation of days', weeks' even months' worth of clever banter, all compressed into a brief time during the film. Maybe that's what the abuse and violence in Scum and Dog Pound represent. The amount of violence you could witness in a prison facility over the course of weeks or months, all compressed into 91 grueling minutes on screen.

And that's the end of my comparison between His Girl Friday and Dog Pound.

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Dog Pound (film) from Wikipedia. "Three boys caught between youth and adulthood struggle to survive behind bars in this hard-hitting drama."Dog Pound from Scum 1979 WikiDog Pound: Film Review The Hollywood Reporter. 7:53 AM PDT 3/28/2013 by Frank Scheck. "Although it has a visceral intensity, this teen-centered prison movie doesn't avoid the familiar tropes of its genre."The Setting Is Juvenile, the Problems Are Not The New York Times, By Jeanette Catsoulis, Published: March 28, 2013. "Few things can be more embarrassing than being arrested while performing cunnilingus, as the 16-year-old Davis (Shane Kippel) can attest. Nabbed in his bedroom for drug possession while enthusiastically pleasuring his girlfriend, Davis is soon joining fellow teenage offenders Angel (Mateo Morales) and Butch (Adam Butcher) as the newest inmates of a juvenile prison in Montana. "Film Review: Dog Pound By Frank Lovece from Film Journal International, March 28, 2013. "While this perfect storm of guards' and other officials’ inattention may certainly be possible, the filmmakers don't sell it by any means: Nothing reveals a facility that's disorganized, poorly run, inhumane or even uncaring — and apparently its officials still haven't figured out how to use this new thing we have now called security cameras."

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

The lives of boys sometimes go wrong and we imprison them. "For their own good." This leads to a dramatic situation, and although it hasn't been pumped for as many films as men's and women's prisons, there have been some. Few of them are great films, but some of them make an effort. Some approach greatness of a cinematic kind. Vittorio de Sica's 1946 Shoeshine is the best of them.

This FlasHmatch was inspired by a sort of coincidence. Remembering Shoeshine and how heart-wrenching that Vittorio de Sica movie is, I watched one called Hell's House that also streams on Netflix. Then I selected a much more recent movie called Dog Pound, which I learned was based on a British teleplay, Scum, that spawned a theatrical borstal film. So, I ordered the DVDs and watched both versions of Scum. In a review of Scum I learned about Borstal Boy and streamed a copy of that to watch. If I add the Frankie Darro movie Boy's Reformatory to the list, and Holes, I've seen 8 movies that take place in similar settings. The longest lists of boys reformatory films I can find don't have many more, although there are a few on those lists that I haven't seen.

They all seem to share the message, "this is no way to treat boys, even bad boys." Perhaps my brain imposes that message on these movies. They also seem to say, "Whatever adversity you face you can endure it and rise above it, although not everyone will." But, again, maybe it's just something that I see in the film, like with a Rorschach test. In reality, both messages are empty. The first because we aren't creative enough as a species to think of anything else to do with problem children; sadly it takes too much time, inventiveness, effort and money for us to press forward with any other plan. And the second message is empty because if no one cares enough about you to help you find the way to rise above adversity, you're liable to be sucked down into a pit by it.

In nearly all 8 of these cinematic cases there are boys whose last place on earth is the juvenile detention facility where they are imprisoned. Maybe no inmate dies in Holes. I can't recall. In one film a boy dies during an escape attempt.

How the main characters wind up behind bars differs: in one film the boys are caught skirting the line of the law, and punished for it. In more than one case a boy takes the rap for someone else and goes to lockup. In one the boy is wrongly accused and does prison time due to a miscarriage of justice. But in half of them the boys sent to lockup have actually broken the law, or the rules of the borstal.

The only one of the 8 films I've seen that is meant to be uplifting is Holes. The most depressing are the three from this FlasHmatch, although Shoeshine runs them a really close race. Whether any of them are "genuinely realistic" is impossible for me to say. I was inside a prison once for six hours shooting a video about special cell-door hinges and how to install them. But I could pretty much leave whenever I wanted. It's not the same.

As bleak as an adolescence endured at liberty can be, it must be unimaginably worse to be robbed of your freedom during that time of your life. Perhaps Scum touched too sharply on the corruption inside the borstal system. But the headmaster in Borstal Boy is caring and understanding, and the film is set 20 years before Scum. The main thing is that most of these films come off as "believably realistic" which makes them more upsetting. The filmmakers trade on our ignorance of the truth of a boys' reformatory, and use that gap in our knowledge to tell us a few interesting stories. They don't have to make it real, they only have to make it seem real to us.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

The three films have so many similarities that I wanted to make comparisons. My first idea was too complicated, so I regrouped. Even before that I had a question: "borstal?"

To get started, I looked up "borstal" hoping to find where the weird name for a prison came from. Wikipedia told me this:

It was the task of Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise (1857–1935), a prison commissioner, to introduce the system, and the first such institution was established at Borstal Prison in a village called Borstal, near Rochester, Kent, England in 1902. The system was developed on a national basis and formalised in the Prevention of Crime Act 1908.

So the word comes from a regular old place name in Kent. The prisons might have been called kents, I suppose. If you were a youngster and committed a criminal infraction in the UK now, you wouldn't go to a borstal. "The Criminal Justice Act 1982 abolished the borstal system in the UK." But our young friends in Scum are sent to one because they are lawbreakers a few years before the borstals were abolished. Some claim that these films had a role to play in the closing of the borstal system.

Induction Scene
Beginning with the first scene in each Scum production, prison warders Taylor and Hunt begin to dehumanize the three new arrivals. The boys' first names are Carlin, Angel, and Davis, but they have to constantly respond to the question "Name and number?" with something like, "4736 Angel, sir." (Scene comparisons are behind the spoiler tag.)

The 1977 film shows all three naked, and being told to bathe in overly-hot water in bathtubs before being issued their prison garb and linens. The camera then lingers in the office with Carlin in the two Scum films, as he is interviewed by the warders, but we follow all three boys through their initial strip search in Dog Pound.

The two versions of Scum show virtually the same thing. Warder Mr. Taylor assaults Carlin as he is processed into the borstal, grabbing his balls first, pushing him back across the room against a metal cabinet, and then punching him in the gut twice. We are left to wonder what happens to Angel and to Davis during their orientations. But remember that these guards know that Carlin assaulted a warden at his previous borstal, so they are lying in wait for him when he arrives.

Dog Pound's induction dehumanization is largely verbal with no weapons or fists being used on the new inmates. There is no 4-digit number that has to be continually recited.

In the versions from the UK, Carlin is the character who assaulted a warden at his previous borstal. In the 2010 film it is Butch who did this, and we actually see the event at the beginning of the movie. It is fairly clear in the UK films that Carlin is the main character, but Dog Pound cleverly conceals this fact until about halfway through the movie.

When the boys have been processed in they are taken to their rooms. In Scum, Angel and Davis are placed in single rooms, supposedly for their protection, but Carlin is put into a dorm with the current "daddy", or dominant inmate of the wing where they are to stay. Banks has two followers, Eckersly and Richards (all are Trustees). The three brutalize Carlin in the middle of the night, but the victim claims to the warders that he fell on the unfamiliar stairs.

In Dog Pound, Butch, Angel and Davis are all placed into Dormitory A1 over which Mr. Goodyear has charge. Butch eventually meets Banks, and his toadies beat up the new boy during the night. Butch claims that he is clumsy and fell.

In all three films, this beating sets the stage for Carlin or Butch to take over the wing, and later the entire facility as the inmate leader (called the "daddy" only in the UK films).

The induction scenes set the tone for the way these three characters and their fellow inmates will be treated by the prison guards as the story rolls ahead.

At the borstal, the inmates have to stand at attention and recite their "Name and number?" when told to do so, but Dog Pound doesn't use this feature. Instead, inmates are told to lie chest-down on the floor with their hands at their sides in order to demobilize them.

All three films get the message across that these boys are in a tough environment. In the borstal, both the other inmates and the guards are their enemies. But at Enola Vale, the guards are at worst indifferent. Some of the guards actually have the boys' best interests at heart. The brutality comes from other inmates. Why the administration is unable to stop all this is unclear (that is one of the weaknesses of the film).

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Juvenile Detention Center General Information for Fairfax County, Virginia, USA.Behind Bars, Teenagers Become Prey by T.J. Parsell, a human rights activist dedicated to ending sexual violence in detention, [he] is the author of Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prison. "At the time I was sent to prison, for robbing a Fotomat with a toy gun, I was still a boy — physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally — and ill equipped to respond to the sexualized coercion of older, more experienced convicts. On my first day, I was drugged, gang raped and turned into sexual chattel."Life in a young offenders' institution from The Guardian.com. By Amelia Gentleman, Monday 21 November 2011 15.00 EST. "A prison officer takes him to a side room where he removes his purple jumper for a search of his upper body, then his black jeans for a lower body search. He is asked to sit on a big grey plastic Boss (Body Orifice Security Scanner) chair to do a body scan for concealed metal objects. Occasionally staff find mobile phones hidden inside a prisoner's bottom, or drugs tied with cotton thread to their testicles, but Ryan is new to the prison system and doesn't know any of these tricks."Borstal at Wikipedia. "In the UK, borstals were run by HM Prison Service and intended to reform seriously delinquent young people. The word is sometimes used loosely to apply to other kinds of youth institution or reformatory,[3] such as Approved Schools and Detention Centres. The court sentence was officially called "borstal training". Borstals were originally for offenders under 21, but in the 1930s the age was increased to under 23. The Criminal Justice Act 1982 abolished the borstal system in the UK, introducing youth custody centres instead."

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

No, this isn't a "who would win in a fight?" kind of comparison. It's a brief analysis of how skinny actor Adam Butcher manages to successfully pull off a role that much more physically substantial Ray Winstone played twice.

It's an established trope of stories that embrace conflict, that the biggest guy rules the roost. So, if you cast someone like Adam Butcher as "the daddy" of a boy's prison, how does he pull it off? Well, Butcher manages to do so, and not with words. He somehow finds a way to let us see the force that propels young Butch to take over the joint.

With Carlin, as played by Ray Winstone, we can see that the question he's asked when being processed into the borstal ("Fancy yourself, do you, Carlin?") has to be answered "Yes." And he's larger than most of the other boys at this particular borstal, taller and more muscular, so it's not surprising that he is able to pull it off. Carlin is not exactly fearless, but he's calculating and bold enough to risk extreme trouble if his plan doesn't turn out the way he imagines. Also, he doesn't bother with fighting fair (neither does anyone else around him, including the screws). He's the sort of person you might tend to be wary of, physically, if you were in such a place. And because the actor was two years older in the 1979 remake, he's physically even larger. The actor who plays Pongo Banks is sleeker in 1979, which gives Winstone the apparent size advantage.

Carlin rarely breaks into a smile. One notable exception is the almost-smile that he has once he's bested Baldy, the ruler of B-wing at the borstal.

Adam Butcher is the sort of young man who you wouldn't really be afraid of. He's slightly built, although tall and gaunt. He looks like you could take him with a little gumption. So how does he make Butch's ascendancy believable? Well, he makes Butch be terrified of just about everyone and everything. This would look like simple anger, if we didn't know about the biological imperative of Fight or Flight, which says that if an animal can flee, it will. If it cannot, then it puffs up, growls, and looks and sounds bigger and more powerful than it really is. In other words, it tries to get you to flee. If you will not, then it engages you in a hell bent for leather way.

So, Butch pummeled the guard at his previous juvie prison because the guy scared him. (We also learn later that Butch was protecting other young inmates from that particular guard.) Butch is always warning people to stop. He knows that his fear develops into extreme anger, and he probably doesn't like being that way. Push Butch far enough and he will warn you. Push him a little further, make him even more afraid, and he will strike back. As a character motivation, it works in the film. And, like I said above, Butcher never says this, he simply shows it. Because we have a basic understanding of fight or flight, even if we've never heard it explained, Butcher's acting choice subliminally causes his character's behavior to seem reasonably realistic.

In both versions of Scum, when Carlin is first attacked by a warder during his induction, you can see the fear on his face. He cannot believe what these men are doing to him. So he may be driven by fear to some extent. I would be taken aback, and probably fearful, too, if a man grabbed my balls, pushed me into a cabinet and then punched me in the stomach twice. But Carlin may also be so surprised because it never occurred to him that the guards at this borstal would already have it in for him when he arrived. His infraction was attacking a guard at his previous borstal.

Butch looks out for those he favors, of course. But he seems to interpose himself on more than one occasion between the wardens and inmates as well as between warring inmates. And he seems like someone who is misdirected rather than evil. Although Winstone rarely smiles as Carlin, Butcher plays scenes where his character smiles, laughs, and clowns around, once he's pretty assured that he's ruling the roost. Now and then, for a moment or two he relaxes as his fear subsides, but something always causes it to return.

Now, that may not be your initial reaction if you watch this film. But it's a film that will spur you to thought afterward, and during that time you will see this point. Young Butcher must have figured this out, maybe with some help from Kim Chapiron, before filming began, because his performance is consistent throughout the movie. And even when the boy is given a sort of reprieve, and a chance to get out of prison early, his fear trips him up, flourishes as intense anger, and thwarts his hopes and plans. On first viewing, Butcher's performance is probably the best thing about Dog Pound.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Davis is the vulnerable boy in all three films. He isn't tough. He doesn't imagine the dangers that lurk in the hearts of his fellow inmates. Because he is so nice, and gullible and naive, he becomes the victim of others in all three films. Even when dealing with other inmates who have malice aforethought, Davis keeps telling himself, "Maybe it will be okay." By the end of the stories he has become wary, but that doesn't protect him against the worst affront that he faces. This character is involved in a number of interesting scenes in all three films, but I've limited myself to a few of the most affecting.

Davis
Davis is one of the three youths who come into the correctional institution on the same day. In the Scum films he has run away from his prior open borstal, so is sent to this high-security borstal. In Dog Pound, Davis has been convicted of selling illegal drugs.

Especially in Dog Pound, this character is constantly accused of being gay, and not in a friendly, teasing manner. His nickname is "faggot". At the beginning of the 2010 film there is a scene of him having sex with a girl, during which he is arrested. At night he amuses the other inmates in his dorm with yarns that he spins about sexually conquering his girlfriend's mother. In the UK films his sexuality is actually never addressed.

Davis becomes the scapegoat for Banks and his followers, Richards and Eckersly, who make it a point to find him and intimidate him. (Of course they also do this with Angel, and make an attempt to intimidate Carlin or Butch.) In Dog Pound Banks takes away his brand new boots, leaving Davis the worn out ones that Banks owns.

In the Scum films Davis is set up by Eckersly, with the complicity of a warder who ambles along and "finds" a "stolen" radio after Eckersly insists that Davis borrow it by leaving it in his room.

Davis tries not to accept the offered radio, but Eckersly makes sure the scheme will go forward by setting it down and walking out of the cell.

In all three films Davis is ultimately the victim of a gang rape by inmates. These three scenes are examined in more detail in the essay "Barely in Prison".

The 1977 version shows Davis being assaulted in the borstal greenhouse by two of the inmates from another wing of the borstal. In the 1979 version this is raised to three attackers from C-wing. And in Dog Pound there are two attackers, Banks' old cronies, but Eckersly holds Davis down while Loony rapes him.

Davis keeps the code of silence, and does not tell any authorities about what happened, although Mr. Sands watches the rape taking place in both UK films. Even in that situation, Davis tells Sands that he fell down, not that he was sexually assaulted. In no case are the rapists reprimanded. In the 1979 Scum film Davis learns at supper that he will be assigned to the isolated greenhouse again the next day.

All three films feature a scene that takes place on the night after the assault, in which Davis tries to get in touch with the guards on duty on his floor. Each film sets its own rhythm and order for the scene. They are similar, but not exactly alike.

In the Scum films Davis simply feels depressed and afraid following the rape. In Dog Pound the boy wants to call his mother, and is denied by the guard. He is still in Dormitory A1 after the incident. In Scum and Dog Pound, a guard speaks to him, but the guard rebuffs him and tells him not to ring again.

Davis has a double-edged razor blade in his possession. The 2010 film doesn't show the blade. The boy tries to get the duty warder to come down to his room after he slits his wrists in Scum, but the warder ignores the light indicating that Davis is ringing, and the kid is dead the following morning. In Dog Pound he slits his wrists without our knowledge and we see his blood-soaked blanket in the morning shot.

There is actually a strong emotional impact with the mounting of the 1979 suicide sequence, but not nearly as much in the other two films. The Scum films have Davis in a single room, but in Dog Pound the boy sleeps in a bunk bed in a dormitory.

After Davis kills himself, the inmates start a hunger strike in the refectory. One voice begins to chant "dead; dead; dead" which leads to the entire room chanting in unison, and that develops into a riot situation. In Scum the rioting starts when Carlin throws his tray of food against the wall. In Dog Pound, Butch stands and bangs the legs of his chair against the wall. After this, all hell breaks loose.

Davis comes under Carlin's or Butch's de facto protection, once he is in charge. Davis and Angel are part of the leader's mealtime posse. But the wardens sometimes throw Carlin or Butch into isolation cells where they can't cast a long shadow over Davis' tormentors. Whenever Davis is in isolation he is safe. But when Carlin or Butch is in solitary, the thugs who persecute Davis can get to him, and do so.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

It would be impossible to define what is and is not allowed in making art. Whether the artwork is "good" or not, the subject of the artwork is beyond pre-definition. What is a masterpiece to one observer may stimulate another to ask, "Yes, but is it art?" Stepping over the line is almost necessary in order for the idea of what is art to grow. But at any given historical moment, it may not be "the right time" for what you have in mind.

Is this what happened to the BBC version of Scum? Did Minton and Clarke go too far? Someone at the BBC believed that they had. But was it in the depiction of violence? Was it the more-than-usual amount of nudity in the film? Was it the political message? Maybe it was an amalgam of all these things. When art fails, besides hearing some say, "It's a piece of crap," you often hear someone say that the "the artist is just way ahead of his time."

Is that what happened to the BBC version of Scum? As I noted in one of the reviews, Alan Clarke certainly believed that the original version could be improved, and he reduced some scenes, removed others altogether, while expanding even others. He allowed for much more use of profanity, but got rid of nearly all the nudity. So did the 1977 version exploit the relaxation of rules about bare skin, and exploit the perceived audience interest in graphic depictions of violence? You may not know that in the 1970s people were often heard to defend the ratcheting up of violent content on television with the phrase, "Well, violence happens all the time. It's just a part of life."

People criticized Clarke's films as having too much violence (the "official" reason the '77 film was banned from broadcast). I haven't found any contemporary reviews, so I can't say whether the word "gratuitous" was thrown about when assessing the earlier films. But some have made that accusation toward Kim Chapiron. People who have been following my opinions in this thread and on this board will already know that I consider anything that is in any film gratuitous. Nothing has to be there, and the films don't even have to be made.

Perhaps the way to assess the violence (and the level of violence is very high in all these movies) is to apply the yardstick of appropriateness to the story being told. "Does the violence reasonably fit with the characters and events that make up the cinematic story?" Of course, if you start with the question, "Does this story need to be told?" you'll reach a different conclusion. You can ask the same question about sex scenes, and even sentimentality. No doubt, some of you would find a lot of gratuitous sentimentality out there!

I think this will be my conclusion: because no film has to be made, but all films aside from documentaries need a story to carry them along (in the general public perception), all things cinema are exploitations of one thing or another, one idea or another, one ideology or another. Perhaps it is the notion of mining an observation, whether political, religious, or aesthetic that provides the inspiration for starting each film project. We who make art fancy that we have something to say. Some of us want to say it and grow rich at the same time. If we create art with the ultimate aim of making money from it, then we will be quick to exploit whatever we see as a currently hot topic. We want to move product, so we make what will sell. That is one of the ultimate incarnations of exploitation, but it is also (however tawdry to our minds) an inspiration for the creation of artworks. And, sometimes, good artworks.

Were good artworks created in the case of these three movies? The Scum films are beginning to pass the test of time. Our general numbness to violence has made them seem less of an affront in that area. Dog Pound has much more violence, much of it subtle, than either version of Scum has. Both Scum and Dog Pound reach for the edge more than once, but the 1970s edge was different from the 2010 edge. For 1977 Scum was not "acceptable" TV fare, and the 1979 theatrical remake was destined to be trimmed slightly for broadcast in 1983, but there are cable networks that could, and may have, broadcast Dog Pound without cuts.

The new film won an award right out of the gate, but will it be re-issued in 2040 in a retrospective edition? Will a 42-year old Adam Butcher record a commentary track? Will Kim Chapiron be interviewed for a retrospective featurette at age 50? Does it have anything that will make it worth rediscovery mid-century?

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

The third common scene that I've selected comes at the end of the film. I mentioned it briefly in the essay about the tribulations of the character Davis.

Riot
In the review of the 2010 film I note that the ending scene doesn't have a clear stimulus (at least on first viewing).

We know that the boys are chanting "Dead. Dead. Dead." but it isn't clear that the death they are chanting about is Davis' suicide, as it is in either version of Scum. This is because I wasn't sure Davis was dead when I viewed the film the first time. Thus, I thought the inmates were striking in response to Angel's death. The lack of clarity only matters because (to my mind) the ambiguity diffuses viewer focus at the climactic moment in the story. I admit it doesn't really matter whether it is one death, or both deaths that trigger the dining hall riot. Both the 1979 film and the 2010 second remake have two deaths before the climax (Toyne and Davis in the 1979 film, and Angel and Davis in the 2010 film).

The two Scum presentations of the riot show the destruction of the borstal property in the dining hall and the aftermath where the two remaining protagonists are locked into solitary once again, but in bloody condition.

The scene is longer and more complex in the most recent film. In Dog Pound the facility security forces enter the dining hall and use nightsticks, tear gas and rubber bullets to quell the riot. The speed with which they arrive and the lack of self-control displayed by the adults with weaponry is startling. Butch actually bashes his way out of the building with a fire extinguisher canister. But there is no escape over the razor-wire festooned border fence. Butch begins to laugh at himself and his continuing imprisonment. Still, even though he cannot get away, the SWAT team break one of his knees. Dog Pound ends suddenly after Butch is knee-capped and dragged back into the Enola Vale Youth Corrections Facility.

At the end of Scum, the governor of the borstal gathers the inmates and tells them that they will pay for every bit of the property that was destroyed, and that death is a part of life in the reformatory just as it is in the outside world.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

I've noticed that more often than not, the message "brief nudity" on an MPAA rating grid signifies that before the film is over I will see bare male buttocks. On occasion the bare skin will belong to a female. And, true, it doesn't last very long on screen, but female nudity is treated differently in the ratings game, I think. No one in the banner above is "nude" in cinematic terms.

These are not the first or only films in cinema history, or in these Rematches to show human nudity, or to feature sexuality. This is simply the first comparison in this thread where any notice has been paid to the phenomenon, because of the particular historical production timeframe of the original film. As far back as the 19-teens men have often been shown shirtless and bare-legged. Most people haven't considered this startling since perhaps the 1920s. Certainly not since men's and boys' swim trunks lost the tank tops and the legs became short. Think of the early Tarzan films and how close Johnny Weissmuller was to nudity in the 1932 film (not to mention the 1929 film Glorifying the American Girl).

We all know that "nudity" is not the same for male and female actors. If you can see what would normally be hidden by boxers, or more specifically a Speedo, and the actor is male, that's nudity. So nudity for male actors means simply that the buttocks or genital area are on display. If the actor is female, even if only her chest is bare, that's nudity. Naturally, a bare-naked male chest is not considered nudity. Neither is a bikini clad woman.

The nude bodies seen in these three films are male, of course. As with the violence in the films, it would be only truthful to categorize the nudity as exploitative. But sometimes an assault on the expectations of the audience can draw viewers into the film as easily as push them away.

The idea for this essay didn't exist until I saw the 1977 film, made first of these three, but which came last in my viewing order. The 1977 film seems somewhat ground-breaking in the amount of skin on display. Not that there are many scenes, but that they exist at all is notable. The nudity is especially notable because the 1977 film was intended for broadcast on the BBC, although it would not have been the first nudity seen on television, not even American television. The bare skin is clearly exploitative of the then-recently-relaxed standards of decency that affected the entire film industry in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. While researching this film I learned that one of the earliest nude scenes in a prison film appears in Shoeshine (1946) when the boys in the Italian youth prison are bathing, but that wasn't intended for TV.

In addition to existing for possible shock value the nudity is also used for story purposes, and fits into the plots of each film, all of which are focused on the humiliation that prison inmates endure. None of the extensive bareness is sexual, and none is terribly graphic. When the nudity is sexual, it is reduced in extent. Still, the frame-grabs featured in this essay, although tame, will probably be NSFW depending on where you W of course, so they are behind spoiler tags.

Looking at stills of these scenes is misleading in a sense. Of course, the frame grabs include no motion, which undoubtedly distorts the impression of the shots compared to what you'd actually get when you see the bare skin along with the movement inherent to film. Keep in mind that the duration for which you can see any of these shots in the films is not very long.

The induction scenes in the 1977 and 2010 films includes shots of the new inmates in between civilian clothes and prison uniforms. The 1977 film also shows nudity in two other scenes, one of which is a gang rape. The only nudity in the 1979 film occurs in the gang rape scene.

The total nudity used in the beginning of the 1977 and 2010 films demonstrates that these boys are forced to lose any expectation of being treated with dignity along with their clothing, as they enter the borstal or the Enola Vale facility. But the nudity serves a second function. As with the early shot in Ivan's Childhood when we see scrawny Ivan taking a bath, the scenes demonstrate to us that these are not superhuman boys, but just ordinary youngsters, some of them smaller in stature than most. Although the head-to-toe nudity may be startling if unexpected, it isn't sexual in any way, and simply comes across as one of the first attacks on the boys' dignity as they enter the facility. These young inmates will be under surveillance at all times, and everywhere they go.

Clarke's 1977 TV film uses the transition moment to symbolize the boys' vulnerability by tracking the camera through a bathroom where each of the inductees is standing or sitting in a tub of water that probably contains disinfectants.

This immediately follows the title card. As he steps in, Angel complains that the water is too hot, but he is told to sit down in it anyway. We then see each of the other two, Carlin and then Davis, as he sits in the hot water as well. The wardens have nightsticks, but the boys have nothing. Angel is new to the borstal system, but both Carlin and Davis have come from other, less-restrictive facilities to this demeaning and corrupt borstal. In Scum the boys are nothing to any of the warders except new hellions to keep in line. "Name. And. Number!" "4737 Carlin, sir!"

In Dog Pound the boys are first seen in vignettes that introduce the three who will be the central inmate characters of the film. Butch's introduction is last, followed by the title card for the film, and a title that sets the location as the Enola Vale Youth Correctional Center, Montana. Immediately, we are in the warden's office with three guards, and three boys who are present for a strip search.

They are shown in extreme closeups at first, then are seen standing in their birthday suits, attempting to maintain some dignity by cupping their hands over their genitals. The characters' complete vulnerability is on display along with the actors' bodies. We watch as they demonstrate that they have nothing in any body cavity, after which plastic tubs containing Enola Vale uniforms are scooted toward the boys. They begin to dress.

When we follow Mr. Goodyear into the office, each of the boys is now appropriately covered in the navy blue sweats of the institution. This symbolizes to each inmate that he is the property of Enola Vale until his sentence has been served. All his liberty has been removed and replaced with a prison uniform. For two of them this is a change. For Butch it is only a change of place, since he came from a different youth correctional facility to this one because he attacked a guard there. Mr. Goodyear is usually the only one of the keepers who shows the boys even the slightest hint that he considers them valid human beings.

In the 1977 TV film Scum, Angel's clothes are stolen when he is bathing one day.

The prison matron happens to be coming up a stairwell as Angel, naked and wet, attempts to run back to his cell. Possibly he fears an attack by whomever took his clothes. Instead of making a clean trip he is spotted by the Matron, the only female in the whole film, and she shrieks. Modestly covering himself with his hands, he tries to explain that his clothes were stolen while he was bathing, but the warders gruffly and roughly take Angel back to his cell, bring his clothes out from it (the thief clearly returned them there) and one warder pushes Angel into his cell, where he falls face-down onto the concrete floor. In this borstal the inmates are punished for the acts of others.

Interestingly, this scene is followed by the theme-revealing scene with Archer and warder Mr. Hunt speaking in a room while the rest of the boys are at chapel. Archer is interested in the loss of dignity suffered by both inmates and the guards, and we have just seen such an incident involving Angel. Naturally, he winds up being punished for this.

The most expected scene with nudity is a Dog Pound scene set in Lavatory A1, located next door to Dormitory A1. Butch is brushing his teeth on the morning after Banks and his toadies beat him up in the night.

The shot opens with a few inmates showering. The shot pans left until we see the sinks on the wall, where Butch is brushing his teeth. After an actor walks through the shot and out the door, Banks and his sycophants come through the door.

Showering and bathing scenes are frequent inclusions in films where the producers want an R rating. That's why I said this one is the most expectable of all these nude scenes. As I wrote above, there is even a scene in Shoeshine that shows the boys in the prison scrambling bare for bathing spaces. In adult prison movies there are even more examples of showering bare bums, and even rape scenes (remember the one in American History-X?).

In all three films the prison rape scenes show less skin than the scenes we've looked at so far. There is enough skin exposed to leave no doubt that rape is taking place, while other aspects of the on-screen presentation leave a distasteful effect that is brutal and graphic. We aren't meant to like what we are being shown. In the graphics for this discussion I've attempted to let you judge the nudity in view of the entire scene.

The 1977 rape scene doesn't feature any graphic nudity. Only enough to make it clear what is happening to Davis. Once the rape itself is established, the camera is diverted to other things until the rape is interrupted, when Mr. Sands finishes watching through the glass and comes into the hothouse.

The only nudity in the 1979 film occurs during the gang rape. Davis, working alone in a greenhouse, is attacked by three C-wing inmates. The first two graphic boxes pretty closely represent a single frame from each shot in the final edit. The third graphics frame attempts to show some of the action within longer takes.

Davis is seen being stripped of his overalls, and there are intense shots of the assault made by two of the inmate characters. As for nudity, the extent is basically bare legs and buttocks.

The third rapist is shown pulling up his pants before he can assault Davis. Most of the second attack takes place off screen as the camera shows Sands looking in through the window.

As you can see from the stills, this sequence is quite brutally explicit without becoming outright pornographic, and is much more disturbing than the 1977 sexual assault scene because of it.

The 2010 rape doesn't include much nudity at all. It shows only Davis' buttocks as his pants are pulled down, and then consists of tight closeups during the sexual assault itself.

There are cut-aways to action in other parts of the prison during the rape scene. Those are omitted here to fit the scene in question into one graphic box.

I haven't read anywhere that the amount of nudity in the BBC TV film might have been a major reason for its broadcast ban. There is plenty of violence, and accusations against the borstal system made in a cinematic style, to have been the cause of that decision. But some of the shots, though they seem rather tame by 2013 standards, show more bare skin than television viewers were used to seeing, especially in scenes featuring male bodies in 1977.

Go back using these buttons.

Nudity Law & Legal Definition from US Legal.com "Often, exposure of areas above the waist is socially exceptable and doesn't fall under legal prohibitions." Well, we all know that they should have used "acceptable" don't we? It may be legally "exceptable", though.nudity definitions at thefreedictionary.comJohnny Weissmuller at Dr. Macro's High Quality Movie ScansGlorifying the American Girl excerpts from a 1929 film of a Flo Ziegfeld show.Film: Scum at TV Tropes. "Scum is a 1979 British film directed by Alan Clarke, originally based off of a 1977 BBC teleplay. In 2010, the film was remade by Kim Chapiron, under the title Dog Pound. The following page covers tropes appearing in all three versions."PrisonRape at TV Tropes. "A trope in which it is stated, shown, or implied that detainees may be sexually assaulted while in prison (usually by fellow prisoners but sometimes by their captors)."'Take it like a man': The Trivialisation of Male Rape in Contemporary Cinema "This bizarre association between aggressive, abusive prison rape and everyday comedy only reinforces the public perception of male rape being unimportant and something that does not require sympathy or empathy, further isolating male rape victims." Sunday, 13 January 2013 at My Uni Dissertations blogspot.Nudity in film from Wikipedia. "The 1911 Italian film Dante's Inferno, directed by Francesco Bertolini, is loosely adapted from Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy and inspired by the illustrations of Gustave Doré. In depicting tormented souls in hell, there are frequent glimpses of nude male and female actors (including the first male frontal scenes). Remade many times, the U.S. version, Dante's Inferno (1924) from the Fox Film Corporation, also contains groups of nude figures and scenes of flagellation."1967 in television from Wikipedia. "October 1 – In the VPRO TV show Hoepla, model Phil Bloom is seen reading a newspaper; when she folds the newspaper, she is completely nude (the first time someone appears nude in a television program)"Firsts in Television by Christopher Stires, posted in 2007 on Bewildering Stories.com. "1973: Steambath, a made-for-TV movie starring Bill Bixby and Jose Perez as God, broadcast on PBS, is the first to show female nudity (deliberately) with a scene of Valerie Perrine taking a shower. -- M*A*S*H, starring Alan Alda, is the first series to show male nudity when Private Radar O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff) is seen naked (from behind) when he drops his towel and dashes back to the showers when an enemy sniper opens fire on the field hospital. It is also the first series where the phrase “son-of-a-bitch” is uttered."Bikini Portion Banned From Miss World Pageant from NY Mag.com. By Charlotte Cowles. 6/6/13 at 5:07 PM.Speedo Trunks from For Life & Style. "Speedo is famous in the world associated with competitive swimming to make some of the best men’s swimsuits on the market. Competition fits are their own unique style and are not to be mistaken with their everyday mens swimwear you might observe on the beach."HUH? Slightly Odd One-Sided ‘Grape Smugglers’ for Men. Ha ha. Slightly odd? Bullshit. Total weirdness. I think I'd consider anyone wearing this crazy thing to be nude. Would you? Discovered while looking for a Speedo trunks image.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

1977/1979:Alan Clarke directed both the BBC and theatrical versions of Scum. Most of Clarke's work, as with his writer Roy Minton, has been for television in the UK. Only 3 of his listed 26 directorial credits are for theatrical release. However, Clarke directed 13 episodes for Play for Today, 12 of which were aired. Including the 1977 version of Scum, Clarke directed 5 TV movies. He died in 1990 at age 54. He was nominated twice, and won one award.

2010:Kim Chapiron was born in 1980 in France. Dog Pound is his first English language film. He won an award in 2010 for Dog Pound, which was his second feature film. His career began with a short film in 2002. He has a feature film that is completed, due for release in 2014.

Writers

1977/1979:Roy Minton wrote both the BBC and theatrical screenplays. He researched his subject carefully, and was reportedly miffed at Clark for leaving out the homosexual relationship between Carlin and Rhodes in the theatrical film of Scum. Also, they reportedly reconciled over this just before Clarke's death in 1990. Minton is still alive. He began his screen writing career in 1967. All his produced scripts are for television programs, except the 1979 Scum theatrical version, and a 1982 film called Scrubbers. The year before the banned TV film was produced, he penned two scripts that were produced for Play for Today, the series that was supposed to have shown Scum.

2010:Kim Chapiron & Jeremie Delon are credited as writers. Chapiron has four script credits. This is the only credit as writer for Delon. Chapiron has written all four films he has directed, including Smart Ass, due out in 2014. Chapiron already has one award as Best New Narrative Filmmaker given to him in 2010 by the Tribeca Film Festival.

Makeup

These people deserve credit for making the violence appear much more realistic than it would have otherwise--by portraying the result on characters' faces and bodies.

1977:Marion Richards has 18 screen credits for makeup, but many of these are television series. His name (I assume "he" because the name is spelled like my grandfather's name) is associated with Dr Who between 1970 and 1983, during which time he did the makeup on 19 episodes of the program. The only other example of his work I've seen is a 1980 TV production of The Merchant of Venice.

1979:Debbie Scragg has credits both in the makeup department and as a costume designer. In 1979 she worked to fill out Alan Clarke's second production of Scum. This was her first makeup department job! Later she would provide makeup skills for the 1984 production of Nineteen Eighty-Four for director Michael Radford.

2010:Chantal Robichaud has only 10 credits for the makeup department at IMDb, but her career only began in 2010. Dog Pound is her most recent credit there. Her only other work that I've heard of is the 2007 TV movie Sybil. Her work on Dog Pound is epitomized by the left eye in the closeup of Adam Butcher (center).

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Both versions of Scum have only diagetic music, and not much of that.
As for Dog Pound, which has very simple music, I found only YouTube cuts available right now. No search turned up a CD or mp3s. I was able to find an image that at first appeared to be from a Dog Pound CD, but I think it's just an almost square poster, and not even ebay has any listings.

1987 CD: does not exist1987 mp3: does not exist

2010 soundtrack information:alloBO.com. Includes 3 videos, one a fan cover.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Mr Taylor (as Carlin stands at attention holding his pile of new bedclothes): Fancy yourself, do you, Carlin?
.............................................................................................
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[This dialog was copied and formatted, found on the SCUM 1979 Wiki. It is long, but it contains the themes of the film.]

(Archer and Duke are in the recreation room. The rest of the inmates are at the chapel for Sunday morning worship, which Archer refuses to attend, claiming his right as an 'atheist'. Duke is therefore assigned to watch him.)

Archer: Thanks, Mr Duke.Duke: It won't happen again.Archer: Ahh, it's lovely.
(Archer sits opposite Duke by a window. Singing of hymns is heard nearby)Archer: Angels! (smirks)Duke: You might be a smart-arse Archer, but you're nothing but a fool to yourself.Archer: I get by.Duke: You'll do the full stretch, do you know that?Archer: Well..they're not having me, Mr Duke. Oh, I got to save meself whatever methods you bastards devise to destroy me. I'll get through it. Or..or I won't..but it's MY way.Duke: Less lip, Archer. I won't have insolence. Talk's one thing, but I will not tolerate insolence. Right, lad?Archer: Right, sir. (smirks)Duke: Look at you, sitting there with that daft smile on your face. Why arn't you over there with the rest of them?Archer: I'm an atheist.Duke: What do you think that lot are, disciples? Every Sunday there's an officer allocated to watch you, just because you're too bloody pig-headed to sit in chapel for half an hour..and every Sunday that's a little bit more you owe us. You know what the boss is like - you're committing a mortal sin sitting here. They're all atheists, but they don't put it about. I did hear you were thinking of turning indian?Archer: I think about all sorts of things.Duke: Haven't you seen enough of them in here? Why don't you keep your nose clean and get out?Archer: Boredom. Nah, never was much good at that.Duke: Pass the time quietly.Archer: You can't hear me moan, do you Mr Duke, eh? I smile, I smile a lot.Duke: You're loose in the head, lad.Archer: Yeah, you know when I was in 'The Scrubs', sweating it out in that filthy cell, well I had this matchbox..and it said on this matchbox that it takes 60 muscles to frown but only 13 to smile, so, why waste energy? You see, I'm doing me time in a matchbox.Duke: Jesus Christ...Archer: Do nothing to you in here, eh? You know, when I was out I reminded myself you can take something good from every experience..but the only thing I'll take from borstal is evil.Duke: Because you don't bloody toe the line.Archer: No, it's not that Mr Duke, no..I mean, now you take Mr Goodyear - right, he rattles out bullshit about 'character building' morning, noon and night..well, it's impossible..it's not on, how can anyone build a character inside a regime based on depravation? It's a One Way Contamination, good fine minds thrown in with crazy, perverted people..I mean, what am I doing here? Why arn't I on another wing there there might at least be someone to talk to, where I could be civilised? I'm always looking over me shoulder..see, if it's not a screw at me, it's a con. Why didn't they send me to an open nick?Duke: You're too old for this lot, I'll give you that...they should've given you a prison sentence.Archer: Right, you're right.Duke: I was happier in prison. Now I've gotta finish MY time with a bunch of snotty young hooligans..2 years of this lot before I retire.Archer: How long you done?Duke: A long time.Archer: That's a hefty sentence, Mr Duke. One way or another, in prisons.Duke: Public service, Archer...haven't you realised that some of the lads actually LIKE being in here?Archer: Uh, yeah, it's called institutionalised.Duke: They're secure.Archer: Ah well, in here you act, you're punished and you're free..but outside, out there, you act, you get punished by your own guilt complexes and you're never free.Duke: And what little book did you get that from?Archer: This one (taps head). Certainly not from what's on offer here...Mr Duke, I er...I don't wish to underestimate your lifetime's work, but, er..the punitive system does not work. I mean, my experience of borstal convinces me that more criminal acts are imposed on prisoners than by criminals on society.Duke: Convinces you, eh? Fancy half of that mob charging up and down your street? Fancy your mother tackling that lot on the rampage? No you bloody well don't..so what do you do about it, eh? Come on, what do you do about it?Archer: I, I'd talk about it first, like we are.Duke: Talk's bullshit, you lock them up!Archer: I'd also consider what happens to their guardians...Duke: Watch it, lad.Archer: No come on, I'm serious Mr Duke..well, take yourself..for a weekly wage you have been locking up men and boys for most of your working life, right? Now, hanging down your leg is a chain, your key-chain, and the length of that chain indicates the time you have spent in the service...right, you may not have been fortunate in terms of promotion, but the length of that chain gives you rank over other officers of..similar rank only..but at the same time it acts as a constant reminder that although you have spent your life in the prison service, you are still only a basic officer...now, who gets the stick for that? US. Who pays for that daily humiliation?Duke: (rising from seat) Stand up, Archer..and wipe that fucking grin off your face before I knock it off..name and number!Archer: 4721, Archer, sir.Duke: I give you my fucking coffee, and think you can sit there and have the piss out of me?Archer: No sir, I didn't...I, I never get the chance to express myself.Duke: Then it's as well you don't, lad!Archer: I was only concerned with men being stripped of their dignity, cons AND screws..we aren't much different in here, you know!Duke: You're on report for insolence.Archer: (sarcastically) Yes, sir.Duke: STAND UP STRAIGHT!
(SCENE ENDS)

(Angel, Davis and Carlin are all lined up against a wall)Mr Sands: Right. I'm Mr. Sands, this is Mr Greaves. I'm the senior officer and I run A wing. I run it. Right, Carlin?Carlin: Yes, Sir!Mr Sands: I come down very heavy on anyone who doesn't grasp that fact. Right? Right?Carlin: Yes, Sir!
(Mr Sands walks up to Angel)Mr Sands: Angel, you're in a single room. Some of the lads are what you might call..."prejudiced". You're well advised to keep yourself to yourself. Its your first borstal, innit lad?Angel: Yes, sir, apart from the Scrubs...Mr Sands: (interrupts Angel) Forget the Scrubs! The holiday's over.
Mr. Greaves: Move!
(Angel moves)Mr Sands: Davis, you were foolish enough to run away from an open borstal and you'll soon be wishing you were back there. You're in a single room. Now move!
(Davis moves)Mr. Greaves: (at Davis) Move it!Mr Sands: (at Carlin) Carlin, you're in a dormitory. Now, move!
(Carlin moves)Mr Sands: That's it! In there, on the left.
(Carlin goes to the dormitory on the left and stops. Mr Sands walks in)Mr Sands: (points at an empty bed) That's yours, Carlin. (Carlin moves to the empty bed) You know the ropes and you know why you're here. I'll jump on you from a great height if you so much as breathe. Got that?Carlin: Yes, sir!Mr Sands: There's a lad, a big lad called Pongo in that bed. He heard you were coming. Now, grab that broom and get to work on that floor. I wanna shave in it! (Carlin grabs the broom and scrubs the floor. As he scrubs the floor, Mr Sands deliberately drops Carlin's gear) Carlin? (Carlin stops momentarily) We don't leave our bed space in that condition in here. Make up your bed and put your gear away. On the double! (Carlin puts the broom away and unpacks his gear) Next time, you're on report.
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.............................................................................................Richards: (to Angel) Stand up, coon. Name and number. Attention when I come in. I said up!
(Eckersley closes the door)Richards: (grabs Angel) He said up, didn't he?
(Banks and Richards beat up Angel and scatter his gear on the floor. Eckersley, Banks and Richards leave)

(a bit later)

Mr Sands: (to Angel): Can't remember? Your number, lad, that's all you are, a number! A number! Four digits. That's all you are! 4736! Name and number? (to Angel) Hands by your sides! Attention! Name and number?Angel: 4736, Angel, sir.Mr Sands: Louder!Angel: (Slightly louder) 4736, Angel, sir.Mr Sands: Straight out the banana trees, eh? Well, you take it from me, nig-nog, you go steal white mans motor cars and you get white man's stick, right?Angel: Yes, sir.Mr Sands: Now, get this cell scrubbed. On the double!
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(Sands discovers that Carlin has defeated Pongo Banks)Mr Sands: (grabs Richards) Who was it, Richards? Who was it? Carlin? The coon?Richards: I slipped, sir.Mr Sands: I'll give you fucking slipped.
(throws Richards to the ground)Mr Sands: (to everyone) Right, on your feet! Who did this?
(everyone mumbles, "Don't know, sir.")Mr Sands: Come on! Who did it?
(everyone mumbles, "No-one, sir.")Mr Sands: Wheres Banks?
(everyone mumbles, "Don't know.")
.............................................................................................
.............................................................................................Mr Sands: Carlin! Carlin!
(Carlin stands to his ground)Carlin: Sir?Mr Sands: Ok, Carlin. You're really for it this time. Banks and Richards have both named you. You get 3 years for this, scum.Carlin: I don't know what you're talking about, sir.Mr Sands: You fuckin' well know, toe-rag. I run this wing. I'm not letting it disrupted by a back-street villain like you. You'll sign a statement downstairs.Carlin: I've got nothin' to say. Id like to see the House Master.Mr Sands: You will, Carlin. You will.Carlin: And the governor, sir. I've got a witness.Mr Sands: Shit witness. I'm having you lad. You banged that officer at Roly. You must have thought you walked quietly away from that one. But he's here. He's me. He's every fucking screw in this borstal. Every one of us. Come on! [prods Carlin] Fancy taking a poke at me? Come on, big man.Carlin: I've banged no screw, I retaliated. There was two of 'em, kicking the shit out of me.
(Mr Sands slaps Carlin)Mr Sands: Well, retaliate here. Come on! (Mr Sands slaps Carlin again) I'll have you. (Prods Carlin)

2010
[Lines are from the subtitle file, which is not provided on the US DVD.]

Goodyear (looking at Angel, Davis, and Butch): Well, what fresh hellions are these?
.............................................................................................
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(Banks spills hot chili on Butch's thumb on purpose. Butch glares at him, then turns away and walks into the dining hall. He sees an open seat and speaks to Max who is seated across from it)Butch: Is this seat taken? (He sits)Max: Somebody get clumsy with the ladle?
Don't move on it, man. You'll just end up in the hole where that asshole Banks wants you.
The best thing...just pay no mind.
Eventually, they'll leave you alone like they did me. I mean, that was also because I have AIDS.
You know, we all know why you're in here, especially Banks.
.............................................................................................
.............................................................................................
(Davis and another inmate are mopping in the rec room. Banks, Eckersly and Looney, all Trustees, walk in behind him. After some other dialog...)Banks: Your boots, though, man...They're looking, uh, pretty nice, man. (Playfully slaps Davis' face while he looks down at the boots.) Where did you get those at?Davis: At the mall.Banks: At the mall?Davis: Yeah.Banks: How much were they? [Rest of script behind spoiler tag]

Davis: They were, like, I don't know, 100 bucks.Banks: Your mom give you those kicks or something? A little present? Eckersly: From mommy?Davis: No, man.Banks: No?Davis: No, man. I bought these.Banks: You bought 'em?Davis: Yeah.Banks: You a hustler, all right.Davis: Yeah.Banks: Fuck! Hustler hustlin'. What size are you, 10? Big man? Let me check them boots out. Cop 'em over.Davis: No, man. I'm only an 8.Banks: (grabs Davis by the shirt) What the fuck you mean, you is only an 8? Don't look like no 8!Eckersly:You fucking lying to my boy?Banks: Don't look like a fucking 8 to me!Davis: (taking off one boot) All right, man.Banks: Come on, man. Don't be a bitch, man.Eckersly: They are nice-ass boots.Looney: Whoo-hee!Banks: Yeah. I lookin' fresh to death. You feeling me?Eckersly: Man, fresh as fuck.Banks: How am I looking, cuz?Eckersly: Nice. Nice, cuz.Banks: How am I looking?Davis: Hey, they look good, man...Eckersly: They're nice-ass boots.Davis: Can I have it back now?
(We see the other boy standing in the corner, looking worried, watching what is happening.)Banks: Just feeling it out. They're comfy.Eckersly: Let me see that other one.
(Davis takes off the other boot)Banks: Try that shit.Eckersly: I'm gonna try that. Banks:It's all good, man. It's all good. You feeling me?
(Eckersly slips into the second boot)Eckersly: Fuck, they're real nice, bro, but fuck, too big for me, man. Banks:Let me check that. Let me try both of them on at once. (Davis realizes that they are going to steal his new boots.) Now that they're on my feet, I don't really feel like taking them off. They're too comfy. Plus, I'm fresh. You know what I mean? Some boots right there, they ain't tricking. They're nice. (slaps Davis on the arm in a friendly way) Don't take no offence, you know what I mean? Let's peace-out of here, boys. (They walk out of the rec room)Eckersly: Fucking bitch.
(laughter)Davis: Fuck! (kicks bucket)

Movie Quotes for Scum. Includes another movie with the same title, but unrelated.1979 film quotes at IMDbOne Way Contamination. "This is a Key Scene in the film, a dialogue between inmate Archer and warder Mr Duke, and perhaps the most important in the film's critique of the borstal system in the UK."

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

This is the initial post for The Rematch between The Wizard of Oz (1925) & The Wizard of Oz (1939) & The Wiz (1978)

This Rematch is Complete as of 25 Nov 2013.

25 days -- 1 Nov to 25 Nov, 2013

Selected by Gort and Hank

Dang! All three films had pretty boring original posters.

Essays for the Rematch of 3 Wizard of Oz films.

Go back using these buttons.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

This is what I originally intended the 3:10 to Yuma Weematch to be like: I'd watch the films, do the essays and reviews and tech information posts, and put it all up at once. But I got too invested in the project, and posted it like the rest of the Rematches going at the time, except all in series over the course of a couple weeks.

This time I made myself wait. It was a process experiment also, helping me work out possibly more efficient ways to put together the remaining Rematches promised for the next year. My original schedule was to post on 26 Oct 2013, but I went to the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival on the 19th, and that made it impossible. Geez, Loueez, the graphics I ambitiously laid out for this FlasHmatch!

I hope you enjoy it. With 14 posts going up all at once it has to appear daunting. Take it slowly, and work it into your schedule like I did...over a couple weeks' time.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Rock wrote:I didn't realize the '77 and '79 versions of Scum were different films. I always assumed the '79 version was a theatrical release of the '77 film. (I haven't actually seen them.)

I didn't even know they existed until September 23rd. If I hadn't ordered the '77 version I never would have known that I saw a clip from it in a documentary lord knows how long ago. I watched Dog Pound on the 22d and researched connections on the 23rd. Saw the '79 Scum on October 1st, and the '77 on October 4th. (Corrie Trends is a good little gadget!)

And I never expected this rematch would become so involved. Heh.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Haven't settled on what WIZ Rematch essay topics I want to select. Considering those below so far. May not actually choose eight, but I put up eight spacers. Mebbe sums youall have ideas?

Oz: The Land Down Inward
Toto, the Unconditional Dog
Song vs Song ('39 vs '78)
Oz Updates (TinMan, novels, comics, etc)
Legend of the Ruby Slippers
Special Effects
Musical to Visual (stage to film)
Other Historical Oz Films (before 1925)
Munchkins (and the film Under the Rainbow)
Differences: Novel vs Adaptations
Seven Directors!?
Do Poppies Put You to Sleep?

Any of those sound interesting? Some of them seem like more trouble than they're worth to me at this point.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

I was just harvesting links that might be useful in the WIZ Rematch, and I looked at a Wikipedia entry that I already have bookmarked. It had this coincidental line:

The 1939 American musical fantasy film The Wizard of Oz was first telecast on American commercial network television on Saturday, November 3, 1956.

That means that I saw the film for the first time 57 years ago today. My family would have watched it on Channel 11 out of Little Rock on a TV set that my dad had just bought. My then-6-week-old brother says he doesn't remember it. No surprise.

I'll have to work this into one of the essays. Oh, in case you haven't read the date-time stamp on this post, for those of us East of the International Date Line, it's November 3, 2013.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Nearly 4,000 hits since I uploaded the Scum FlasHmatch, but only one reply. Ha ha!

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Scum(79) is a favorite of mine - I don't think Clarke ever really crosses the line with either version of the film, his use of it is all things considered, incredibly restrained, he limits the uses of violence pretty actively by my memory (There's a fair amount of off-screen happenings) to make the impact of the violence more painful to the viewer. Because it should absolutely be painful, it's not surprising it was banned by the BBC at all - as the film actively engages a painful issue that was quite prominent at the time for British society without flinching, or sugarcoating much of anything in the process, most of Clarke's work is like that - I think it really transcends the politics of its era though. He was a great, but unflinching humanist in a lot of ways.